The Inbetween - Reimagined
by Slytherin's Dragon
Summary: Politics is not so simple. It's more than Dark and Light. Given a chance to escape the Dursleys by a mysterious wizard by the name of Richard Abbott, Harry finds himself thrown into a treacherous world of unanswered questions. Throw in dissatisfied Goblins, European government censorship, dragons and mages; the race is on to find the truth. Powerful!Intelligent!Harry and friends
1. The Boy who Played with Fire (1)

**The Inbetween (Reimagined)** – By Slytherin's Dragon

**4/24/13: **

This is a **Redo of The Inbetween**. The first attempt was incredibly messy and ill-planned. My apologies for any problems this decision may have caused. But I think it's better this way.

That said, there are plot differences between the two. It starts off AU this time, instead of that adherence to canon events that I did in the original for the first year of Hogwarts. I have plans. Fun plans.

Pairings: I don't know. It's not important. Not slash. Won't be Harry/Ginny for sure.

**Warnings: Profanity/Science/Death/Violence/Manipulative people - You have been warned!**

**Disclaimer! I don't own HP and other recognizable characters in JK Rowling's world. Nor do I own any references from other fandoms. The plot is mine and my OCs are mine. **

* * *

**Part I(1): The Boy who Played with Fire **

The room was dim, with a lone dusty table, and the only thing that was animate within was a wriggling plump man lying on the ground struggling desperately against unseen forces. His arms were bound behind his back, his legs seemingly glued together and any sound he made went unheard. Minutes of struggling later, his body went slack. He was drenched with sweat. Weakness, thirst and fatigue made him feel like a piece of lead.

_How long has it been?_ He wondered vaguely to himself. The familiar fear coursed through his blood. He had no inkling of why he was here, trussed up in invisible bonds, and left in a tiny dirty room that stank of his own waste.

He froze when he heard footsteps. An unknown man in a long dark cloak strode in the room and flicked a switch on the wall. The sudden flash of light almost blinded the captive, but after a few seconds, his eyes accommodated to the change. He realized that really, the dingy room was only slightly brighter than before, lit now by a simple light bulb attached to the ceiling by a few tattered wires.

The newcomer was tall, rather pale, and what facial features the prisoner could make out were sharp. His pale hand held a simple dark wand in a leisurely manner. The prisoner felt a familiar pang; he had lost his wand sometime back at _the day_, the day that he had fled after his old friend had discovered the truth.

"An insignificant man..." The newcomer spoke quietly with a slight infusion of a Russian accent, "Yet somehow, one of the cogs that keep the machinery running. Very, very spineless... a man governed by fear. Yet, you have no idea what the implications of your actions are. Curious."

The prisoner shot the man a simultaneous look of pleading and fear. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound emerged.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry," The man said with false sincerity, "Let me remedy that." He pointed his wand to the prisoner, who began shaking uncontrollably. His voice was squeaky.

"Please... please..."

"Please what?" The man sounded highly amused. "Is this the sound of how you beg and grovel at Voldemort's feet? Pathetic."

A look of pure agony was what the man got in reply. "He was so powerful, I couldn't resist..."

"And so, you betrayed your friends: James Potter and Lily Evans are deader than doornails, no one knows where their son is, and Sirius... languishing in Azkaban... you know, they picked him up just before you sped away to the sewers. You've been in here a few days."

"Who the fuck are you?" Peter Pettigrew gathered what ounce of spine he had and directed it at his captor.

"That's not for you to know. And it's my job to know everything." The man said gravely, "I could easily turn you in, or you can tell me exactly what happened that night. A little bird told me you were a black sheep, Peter. Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?"

"I will tell you everything!" Peter crumbled, defeated, more unnerved by the man's sudden recitation of childish nursery rhymes than his accusations which were all undoubtedly true. He found himself babbling his doings from the past months, from convincing the Potters to change their Secret-Keeper, to his escape from one Sirius Black.

In other words, he sang like a lark.

"It's a shame, Peter that no one knows what happened that night in that house. By rights, you should have been burned with everyone else in the house. Only the boy survived you know, or that's at least what the sources say. But, perhaps you have a larger role to play in this game." His voice maintained its calmness, "No one knows where Voldie-shorts went, no one knows where the Potter boy is, and no one knows how Godric's Hollow was reduced to cinders, with a couple of Voldie's henchmen burned within. They say that the fighting destroyed the house, but I sure as hell don't buy that. Something burned the house down. And yet..." The man trailed off.

"It was green fire." Peter interjected, in his whiny, pleading voice.

"Green... Green as in Lily Evan's eyes green, or the green of _Avada Kedavra_?"

"I don't know!" Peter whined, "There was too much going on..."

"Think carefully, this is important."

Peter paused for a moment to think. "It was silvery-green. Very Slytherin..."

"Thank you." The man looked intensely into Peter's eyes, and the ratty man knew that _Legilimency _was being used. "All seems to be in order. You have five seconds, and I don't want to see your mug here again." The man seemed to have lost his Russian accent in his last sentence.

Peter felt a strange shift in the atmosphere and instinctively reached for his inner rat with the last bit of his strength.

/**Toph**\

"You let him go? After all of Ivan's hard work to get him here?" Toph exclaimed rather indignantly as the man in the cloak left the grimy room and entered an equally unkempt hallway. "I hope you at least obliviated the miserable turncoat!"

"Tophling," Toph winced at the nickname. It was a play on her first name, Toph, and her surname, Lin. Richard Abbott had the most unflattering habit of calling her such in the past week. She could also sense the man's unbearable grin when she washed the area Richard was standing in with her magic. She was a mage, and manipulating the fabric of magic for her own means was something that came easily to her. Her eyes had a dead silvery look to them, or that's what everyone described them as, but she certainly wasn't blind. Not with her gift of magic. "When Ivan set up those wards, he added a special ward. As soon as the _Anti-Animagi_ ward went down, and a person transformed, they will immediately be apparated into a cozy little cage in Ivan's shop in Knockturn. I think it's cute."

She sighed, as the pair made their way out of the old neglected house, down the old creaky stairs, never to return. Wandlessly she transfigured Richard's cloak into an ordinary Muggle trenchoat just as they stepped outside and they casually strode through the seedy suburban neighbourhood. She saw the world in black, white and shades of grey rather like old Muggle movies, or that's what everyone described Toph's sight as after she described what she saw. She personally couldn't know, considering that everything was black and white to her. Colour was a foreign concept. "Honestly, how does your wife put up with you?"

"She doesn't." Richard laughed quietly, "It's kind of difficult you know. She doesn't know I do other work besides my job at Nimbus. It's complicated enough, she being a Muggle and all. And, now I have a daughter, so no more dangerous and abroad work for yours truly. My excuse this time was that there was a conference for broomstick designers or something along those lines. All terribly boring for her, you see."

"Do you think Ivan will ask rat-boy about the other fiasco? It would be nice to know if _he_ had a hand in it." Toph mused, thinking about bygone days. She found the words of an old rhyme on her tongue. "Remember, remember, the fifth of November..."

"Remember Toph, not all of us are as old as you are." Richard groaned, "If you are talking about the Moo-... And did it even happen on the fifth of November?"

"You know what, I don't even remember." Toph said seriously, "And you are right, you were still a kid back then, and so was rat-boy. Ivan and I are bloody old!"

"And that saying," Toph felt Richard shiver with her magic. "It sounds ominous."

"It was a rhyme I heard somewhere..." Toph said vaguely, "And today is the fifth of November."

"I think there's something really wrong with us," Richard laughed, "You should have seen Petey boy's face when I recited a line of a nursery rhyme."

"Well, I am heading back to America tomorrow," Toph changed the topic to something normal.

Richard looked comically disappointed, "It was nice keeping house with you."

"I am sure it was," Toph grinned. "I am sure we will meet again, but whether the circumstances will be happier than the ones here, I don't know. Go home to your wife and daughter!"

"Will do!" Richard gave Toph one final nod, and a few seconds later, the pair parted ways with barely perceptible 'pops' of Apparition.

/**Harry – Several Years later**\

The boy winced when the cruel lash of his uncle's belt struck against his skin.

"You ungrateful boy – such ingratitude for the years your Aunt and I have put up with you!"

The whipping continued, despite the flow of the boy's tears, and the boy bit his tongue to keep himself from screaming out loud as noise merited double punishment. _It wasn't fair. Dudley had deliberately tripped him and caused him to drop the plate of breakfast that he had cooked. _The plate had been, coincidentally, Aunt Petunia's favourite plate, but it looked no more different than the rest of her plates. Same ugly flowery pattern and same cheap make.

Mercifully, the boy soon felt himself flung into the familiar cupboard, landing in the mess of soiled blankets and old rags. He heard the familiar click of the cupboard door lock, and he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to be in there for a god-awful long time. Or until Aunt Petunia wanted him to pull weeds in from their textbook-perfect garden or trim the perfect lawn. Gingerly, he removed the ruined shirt from his beaten torso; at least this time Uncle Vernon had been in such a rage that he forgot to remove the shirt before the whipping began.

_How he hated summer vacation._

Using his hands, he traced his new accumulation of fresh cuts. He knew that they would be gone after he took a nap. They always were. He didn't know why, considering that Dudley's boo-boos seem to take much longer to heal. He had always suspected that his spoiled brat of a cousin faked his hurts longer than necessary to milk Aunt Petunia for all she was worth, but with all the quirkiness that invariably manifested around him; he had a feeling that there was more to this particular story.

He sighed, after examining his hands. The blood had coagulated before he had an opportunity to feel the viscous fluid. It fascinated him that life seemed to be run with such a simple red substance. He shivered. Despite the warmth of summer, he felt cold, both physically and mentally. He found another old, smelly, and slightly holey shirt in a corner. He put it on, feeling the additional barrier really didn't do anything to his coldness.

He drifted off, his dreams haunted by green and screams. A woman's pleading screams, strange laughter, and green fire. Fire so intense that it consumed everything that it touched – dragons, serpents, the beasts of nightmares in green flames ran around in the darkness, while he sat in the middle, playing something that rather looked like a snake charmer's flute with some sort of purple turban with a feather made up of the same green fire wrapped around his head. The feather-flame swayed with the odd eerie music, continuous and rather oriental in style. The music got faster and faster, and the creatures sped up their tempo until they became one. A green flickering band of fire that suddenly reared up, grew eyes, tongue, fangs and stuck the charmer in the forehead, where the lightning shaped scar resided.

His eyes flickered open, and he rubbed his scar, trying to massage the agony of his migraine away. _Fire._ He thought. He could still felt the residual heat from his dreams. The strange green flames burning hypnotically in his mind – the screams and laughter that had puzzled him so much in his younger days were no longer the focus. His brain was telling him that there was significance behind the fire-dreams, while his common sense tossed the thought away.

Standing up cautiously, he reached for the ceiling, stretching. There was no pain, which was expected, and he knew that without even needing to touch his back, the wounds were gone. It was like magic. He laughed at such a fancy. It was ridiculous, but the evidence was there. He vigorously shook his head, and crawled over to the loose floorboard which held his secrets. He pulled out an old battered encyclopedia that he had managed to scavenge from school. A teacher had tossed it out, and he opened the tattered book to the page where he had inserted a scrap of paper to serve as a bookmark. He knew he was much smarter than Dudley, but he was nowhere as strong, nor fast, due to his malnourished frame.

It was two weeks later, when Aunt Petunia finally allowed him out of his cupboard. 'The gardens needed weeding' she had said, and weeding was what he was doing now. It was mind-numbing work, but at least he was out of the confines of his cage. With practiced ease, he pulled each weed out mechanically, making sure to get all the roots out. His attention eventually drifted to the house beside 4 Privet Drive, as he had noticed that the car parked in front was no longer the same as the car that had parked their two weeks ago. _Maybe new car_ – he mused, or new neighbours.

He went back at his job, tackling one enormous weed at the corner of the garden. He smiled slightly when he saw a tiny snake entwined around a thick green stem which had been a recent addition. It was a rather ordinary snake, with green and black patches, and two faint yellow lines which streaked its back. _A common grass snake_. His brain registered, remembering a book about snake classification that he had read sometime during the school year. The snake flicked its tongue at him, and he stuck his tongue out back.

'_Silly boy... silly silly silly boy!' _The snake seemed to hiss.

The boy was bewildered. He must be hallucinating, his brain said, but no -.

'_Silly silly silly silly boy!" _The snake seemed to enjoy its chant, swaying playfully.

Perplexed, he looked at the snake, pinched himself, and muttered '_I am going crazy, I can hear snakes talk!'_ He heard the hissing noise emerge from his own mouth. _Bloody hell!_

'_Of course we talk, silly boy!'_ The snake tasted the air rapidly with his tongue. _'But what's odd is that you talk back. Humans aren't supposed to talk back to snakes!'_

'_I know that!'_ The boy said back, '_I don't know what's going on!'_

'_Silly silly silly..._' The snake slithered away, '_silly silly...'_

_Snake is bloody bonkers_. He thought before resuming his task.

The summer days passed slowly, as Aunt Petunia slowly allowed him to resume all his tasks. The snake, 'Silly' as the boy had ended up naming him, was a constant amusement for his weeding.

He got whipped and sent to his cupboard again after Dudley had thrown a tantrum over under-fried bacon that he had cooked. _Such a drama queen_. He mused. _I bet he can't even scramble an egg to save his life_. As he was lying in the soiled rags, he found himself thinking about the fire dreams again.

They had come less frequently during the days of chores, where he had been too tired to dream. He remembered his first memory of fire, Dudley's birthday candles – three candles, Harry remembered. A droplet of flame burning the coloured wax slowly, and he remembered that he had been drawn towards the fire, like a moth. The days at Ms. Figgs, when the Dursleys were out, he remembered that she had a proper fireplace that she had kept lit, and he stared into the flames as cats mewed incessantly around him. He remembered when Dudley got a fire sparkler, and he watched in awe as sparks danced in the air, burning the fuel on the stick, leaving a metallic smell behind.

He remembered Uncle Vernon saying to Aunt Petunia that 'the boy was a freak; just look at the way he looks at the sparkler." And his Aunt had agreed.

He almost yelped when he saw silver fire emerge from the palm of his hand. Brilliantly silver, very warm fire that seemed burn from an invisible source, barely a few centimetres above his skin. He dropped his hand, and the fire died. He imagined the flickering tendrils of silver fire, and again, the air above his palm was lit.

It was beautiful.

He searched around for the nastiest rag he owned, and when he did, he visualized the fire again. He tossed the dirty cloth into the flames, and watched the silver consume the rags to ashes almost instantaneously. He imagined burning 4 Privet Drive to cinders, his inner pyromaniac was aroused, but he immediately discarded the idea. His flames were silver, unlike any fire he had ever seen before, and it would be suspicious if he was the only survivor of the house. And besides, where would he go?

To Aunt Marge's?

He really didn't relish the idea of her dogs.

The rest of his week in solitary confinement was spent playing with fire. He sculpted his flames into impossible shapes, burnt tiny scraps of paper, and discovered that his abilities weren't confined simply to one palm, but both as well. He also dug out his old homework from the previous year, and practiced his arithmetic, relearned about trees, and went over his grammar. He knew better than anyone that one had to keep busy, or go mad in such isolation.

The fire was back in his dreams, burning vividly, but this time he was lying on the ground of his cupboard, watching as ring of fire danced slowly around him. The fire soared higher and higher, and budded off into dragons, massive beasts which roared and launched themselves to the walls. The image changed, he was standing now, in the middle of the living room, watching everything burn. It was cleansing in a way, he felt any negative feelings clenched in his mind burn away with the house in his dreams. The him in his dream started to laugh, and it was the same odd laugh that he heard in the dreams of the green fire. The dragons flew back, and flew in a circle so quickly to reform the fiery snake, which again bit him in the forehead. He felt a stab of agony, and the sensation of his body being thrown.

He was no longer in the Dursleys' burning house, but rather, perched upon a statue, looking over beautiful and old stained glass windows. His vision blurred, and he found himself staring at a dusty, neglected room, with a rather odd and old forlorn creature looking nostalgically at an old moth-eaten tapestry. The images continue to morph, from a dark musty dungeon, a room filled with treasures – unimaginable wealth, like Aladdin's cave, until finally he was in a forest. The ground was so close to him which he found odd, until he saw the ground suddenly rise upwards and he realized he was looking from the point of view of a snake!

He woke up shaking, finding it a relief that he was in the cupboard and that he actually hadn't burned the house down.

Dreams were dreams; he wasn't going crazy, was he?

_Then why did it feel so real?_

/**Sirius**\

_Eight fucking years... eight fucking years... _

The thought reverberated in his mind as he sat against his cell wall. Grey stones, cold wall, dirt floor, and metallic bars separated his cell from the walkway.

_I am innocent... I am innocent... Peter – that bastard... _

The years had not been kind to him. He looked emaciated, not because he wasn't well-fed, but the doom and gloom of the inhabitants of jolly old Azkaban was slowly sucking his life away. He was weak and he longed for a good night's sleep. One without dreams – in fact Dreamless Sleep Potion was a commodity worth its weight in gold in this shithole. It wasn't the bars that kept the crooks in, but the mind. One was forced to relieve their worst memories over and over again, and any happy ones would have been gone in a blink of an eye.

For you see, happy thoughts was the commodity that the dementors fought over amongst themselves. It was a very sad thing, actually, for scraps of happy memories were scarce, and feeding frenzies happened when a new prisoner arrived on the rocks.

_James... Lily... Harry... Remus... _

He shook his head, his shaggy long hair and beard swung with the movement. He pressed his hand against the folds of his robes, and he removed a piece of parchment. In elegant handwriting, it said.

_Hello Padfoot, _

_We have stumbled upon the truth many years ago, and we have finally found a means to help. So here is your ticket out of this place. Seek your alter-ego within and go to the docks, where they bring shipments and new prisoners at sundown on your godson's birthday. Follow your instincts there. _

_I. _

He didn't know who _I._ was, but really he didn't give a damn. He wanted off this Merlin-forsaken island. Someone had obviously cared enough to find the truth of that night. He carefully shredded the parchment with his hands, tossed the remains in his mouth and swallowed it. He took one last look at his surroundings again: the old mattress that he had slept on for the past eight years, the worn grey sheets, battered grey pillow, and the bolted nightstand to the grey wall.

Everything was fucking grey.

Sirius never wanted to see that fucking colour again.

Grey was the mist of the dementors, that horrible horrible fog. He shivered when he saw a dementor glide past his cell. Looking out his window, barred with metal impervious to magic, he was able to discern that the sun was setting. He felt himself instinctively falling into his big black dog form, so lanky and thin, a sliver of his former glory.

He felt his sense of smell sharpen, and the more limited colour-spectrum of his dog vision started to take effect. He remembered the days when James and Remus had teased him about being unable to distinguish between red and green.

_A happy thought – hang on, why aren't the dementors swarming to me like flies?_

He slid through the bars, and slowly made his way towards the docks, walking the reverse direction that he had came eight years ago. He saw a Ministry guard, leisurely sitting at a corner with his _Daily Prophet _in hand. The man paid him no heed, and he walked on. Most of the inmates were splayed on the floor, in a similar manner that he had been doing, no doubt feeling too paralyzed with misery to do anything about it. Soon he came to the docks after passing the formidable wall, and sure enough there was the cargo-craft, a small magic-powered motor boat that shipped everything from food to criminals.

The man standing in the boat, dressed in the Azkaban uniform, barely glanced at him. He quietly clambered into the boat, making her wobble once or twice. He curled up near a keg of Firewhiskey rather wishing that he had some himself.

He soon heard the purr of the motor, and with a joyous thump of his heart, he knew that he was leaving the island for good. It was nice to feel the adrenaline of adventure again, like his younger, more carefree and naive days. He found himself thinking of his godson, he'd be a big boy now – ten today.

When the boat was halfway across the North Sea, Sirius' keen ears heard the sound of footsteps. He turned his head abruptly to the man that was steering the ship. _Oh fuck._ He looked towards the sea, and then at the man, debating to swim the rest of the way, or attack the man. Indecision tore at his mind until the man spoke.

"Padfoot, is it? We've never met under any capacity, but rest assured that I will have you delivered to the right place. I hope you like adventure, because we are part of a boat-jacking mission."

Sirius barked once and walked over to the man. The man petted his head, and from somewhere procured a turkey sandwich. He handed half to Sirius, who devoured it as if he never saw food in his life. The man chuckled and whispered, "The Polyjuice is wearing off... don't be alarmed now."

Sirius watched in fascination as the man in front of him grew taller, the hair turn jet black, silky and long, and dark eyes peered at Sirius. There was a faint alteration in facial features, and a paling of the skin. There was something very familiar and unsettling about the man's face that Sirius couldn't quite place. The man waved his wand at his clothing, and they morphed to fit his taller, thinner frame.

"Oh don't look at me like that. Everyone in bloody Britain does. Should have stayed in Massachusetts," The man groaned.

Sirius gave the man his best apologetic expression, and the man laughed. "Glad to see that Azkaban hasn't dulled your humor."

The man walked back to the steering wheel, and Sirius followed close behind. It was so long since he had any sort of legitimate company. And he might get another pet or sandwich. He craved nourishment, be it in the form of nutrients from food or human contact. He gently nudged the man's leg, and he felt the man's right hand scratch his neck.

_Ah, that was good._

But he still couldn't place why the man looked so familiar.

/**Hannah**\

Long blonde haired Hannah Abbott sat in her room, doing division. _It wasn't fair_. She thought, most girls her age would be outside in the glorious sunshine, frolicking, and here she was, doing pages of arithmetic that her father had told her to do before he had left for work today. Her mother had left soon afterwards, to work at her busy job as an environmental lawyer and she felt lonely. She swore that her parents gave her enough homework during the days that they worked just to keep her out of trouble. But she did feel a spark of pride though, her parents trusted her enough to stay at home alone.

Seeing that it was noon, she got up from her desk, a nice sturdy mahogany affair, and walked down the stairs to the kitchen. She got herself a glass of milk, heated up a plateful of green onion Chinese pancakes that her dad had brought home last night, and fetched an apple from the glass fruit bowl that sat in the centre of the marble-glass hybrid dining table.

After she devoured the food, she immediately set herself to washing the dishes, leaving them to dry on the rack beside the sink. She then looked out one of the windows of the house, to see a familiar figure kneeling on the grassy lawn pulling weeds or something like that. _What kind of parent makes their kid pull weeds all day long?_ Hannah mused to herself. Her lonely self had watched the dark-haired boy pull weeds for the past month, with intermittent breaks, because there were weeks that the boy didn't come out of the house.

Gathering some courage, she grabbed her set of keys to the house, put on her running shoes and walked out through the side door. She locked the door on the way out and deposited her keys into the pocket of her jeans. She walked a few steps until she was standing right beside the boy, her neighbour.

"Can I help you?" The boy finally turned around to see her. She examined him, baggy clothes, taped together glasses, but with nice green eyes looking through them, and his messy black hair stuck out in every direction.

"Hi, I am your neighbour." She said shyly and then suddenly she whacked her forehead, "Merlin, I suck at this."

"Suck at what?" The boy asked politely.

"Talking to people," Hannah admitted, "I mean I can talk to my parents and stuff, but really... this is embarrassing."

"You appear to be doing fine." The boy said encouragingly, "So is there anything..."

"Why do you think I want something? I was just lonely in my house and I thought you might want to talk..." Hannah said rather wistfully, "Being cooped up in the house is horrible. And I just moved here, so I have no friends. My name's Hannah Abbott, by the way."

"I am Harry." The boy continued pulling weeds.

"It's nice to meet you." Hannah smiled.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"So why do you pull weeds all the time? I see your chubby brother..."

"He's not my brother, he's my cousin." Harry immediately corrected.

"I am sorry," Hannah looked extremely apologetic, "I didn't-"

"You didn't know." Harry nodded, "Its fine."

She watched quietly as Harry pulled each weed out with care. He meticulously dug out all the roots, and the sight of earthworms didn't faze him one bit, even though Hannah found them rather queasy. When she saw a snake approach, she was surprised to see Harry hiss to it. The snake seemed to hiss back, and seemed to sway comically to some imaginary tune.

"That's Silly." Harry mused, "He keeps me company during weeding days."

"Why do you call him that?" Hannah said in awe, "And are you a Parselmouth?"

"Because he slithers around saying silly silly silly all day long..." Harry said with a deadpan expression.

"Really?" Hannah laughed, "That seems so absurd!"

"I told him that, and he said I was absurd for not doing so." Harry sighed, "You can't argue with a snake. And what's a Parselmouth?"

"Someone who can talk to snakes..." Hannah said, "It's apparently a very rare ability in Europe attributed to dark people, but in places in India, my father tells me that Parselmouths are more common and highly honoured."

"Really?" Harry looked a little shocked, "And here I thought I was talking crazy."

"I think it's awesome, especially if you can make friends with snakes –"

Harry looked ominously in one direction and stiffened up, "I think you better go, my cousin is coming, and this is not going to be good."

"What do you mean?" Hannah asked.

"Just go, I will talk to you another time, hopefully." Harry said insistently, "Please."

Feeling some unknown dread clench at her stomach, Hannah ran for her house door. As she reached the door, she saw Harry start running in one direction, followed by a gang of bigger boys that were hot on his trail. And then she remembered the scar on the boy's head – on the boy's forehead.

Holy bloody Merlin, indeed.

She reached for the keys in her pocket and unlocked the door.

/**Harry**\

Harry ran. There was no stopping. His Dudley-dar was beeping like mad and he could see the word danger flashing in orangey-neon lights in his mind. He was tiring, and he knew that the game wasn't going to last any longer. He felt the familiar taste of iron from the depths of his throat, and he felt like retching. He wished he wasn't here, wasn't chased, somewhere safe... and just when things were at the most dire, he felt an unusual jerking sensation down at his navel. He was engulfed by blackness.

It was a while before he felt himself come to. He felt cold air attacking at his exposed skin. He slowly opened his eyes, and took in the darkness of the sky above. There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the stars twinkled from above, light-years away. He must have fainted, he reasoned, but from what? A beating? Pure exhaustion? And where in bloody hell was he?

He was surprised that he wasn't stuffed in somebody's garbage bin – Piers liked that. He felt rough edges from underneath him, and he was surprised when he looked down. He was exactly two stories above the ground. On a rooftop.

It was nice to lie outside, on a relatively chilly summer. Sure beat the scenery in his little cupboard by a long shot. He thought about the girl that he had met today – the one who had diagnosed his strange behaviour with snakes. It was very good to know that he had lost his sanity completely. She seemed nice... it was rare that Harry had ever got a chance to talk to someone his own age. Usually, Dudley humiliated him so badly in school before he got to meet anyone. The humiliation was usually so bad that most people gave him a wide berth, not wanting to be part of Dudley's victim list. Really, he was surprised that he could still function well amongst people his own age, despite his lack of social activity at school.

Maybe he wasn't too far gone.

He sighed. He knew he ought to feel happy that he escaped Dudley and his gang, and that he met someone that could be his friend, but he felt empty. He remembered days at school, where the class had read a very sad story about a mother squirrel being run over a truck, and he had felt completely empty inside, while others genuinely felt sad. He knew that theoretically, anger and love were arguably the strongest of the human emotions, but he didn't feel either. He neither loved nor hated the Dursleys. But he knew the circumstances in which one could use to fake emotion. He knew how to keep a happy front. That was expected of him, and he'd be beaten if he did any different.

_Now, how to get off this bloody roof_ – the problem at hand, Harry continued thinking. He remembered wishing for somewhere safe. He tried many movements, many trains of thoughts, but got nowhere. When he started to look for ways to get off the roof physically, an insight fired in his brain. Of course, the silver flames... He remembered visualizing the tendrils of fire, what shape they formed, and so on and so forth. With concentration, Harry pictured the ground below, and his two feet landing safely on the grass below, with the rest of his body. A familiar lurching sensation hit Harry's stomach, and he found himself on the ground, just as he had wished.

_Bloody fucking hell! _Did he just learn how to teleport?

He then visualized his cupboard, and with the same careful thought process as before, he felt the familiar sensation of teleportation, and he found himself in his cupboard.

He made a mental note to himself to read up more on teleportation, and physics at the soonest opportunity.

_Bloody hell_, _I can actually teleport to the library!_

And with that happy thought, he went to sleep.

* * *

Review, silly! Thanks!


	2. TBPF (2)

**The Inbetween **– By Slytherin's Dragon

**Part I(2): The Boy who Played with Fire**

Thanks for your support!

* * *

/**Sirius**\

The once familiar, but now not-so-familiar scents of the mainland assailed Sirius' keen sensitive nose. It was blustery out, the wind carrying the strong smell of the sea to the land. The yellowish-grey of the treetop canopy stood out starkly against the blue sky. When the pair had come ashore, Sirius gave a joyous bark. He dove into the soft grass from the large rocks that jutted out from the ground next to the sea and rolled around, taking in the grass like a thirsty man finding body of freshwater in the desert.

He heard the good-natured chuckle of his partner-in-crime, and when he turned towards him, Sirius had noticed the boat was gone from sight. Gone too were the unflattering brown clothes of Azkaban's skipper, replaced by simple charcoal shirt, black trousers and a long elegant cloak the blew in the wind. The man had tied back his long hair in a simple ponytail, revealing the line of his strong jaw. _The man could surely dress well_, Sirius mused, but then again, his sense of fashion could've been skewed due to years of only seeing guard uniforms, the unflattering grey cloaks of the dementors, and the horrid grey jumpsuits of the other prisoners on the runway that separated the two rows of cells.

"It's been years since you've seen grass..." The man remarked more to himself than Sirius. "You're lucky London doesn't have a bloody leash law." He laughed when Sirius growled slightly at the idea of being leashed, "Come here, we are going to _Apparate_."

Sirius bounded over to the man, who grabbed hold of his neck, and he was unprepared for the wrenching feeling of Apparition. It had been too long. Eight damned years too long. He stumbled upon the landing, but the man had maintained his firm grip. Much to his surprise, he found himself standing behind a rather large Tesco, sandwiched between the garbage disposal and the brick wall of the building. They walked towards the entrance and into the store, as the dark-haired man mumbled to himself regarding a list of things he needed to buy. Sirius spent his time sniffing at everything, delighted with the smorgasbord of food. He watched the man buy vegetables, simple cold-cut meats, bread and even some personal items, such as a toothbrush. He watched the man fumble with British muggle money at the cash register, before they finally left.

"I am American," The man sighed as if he could read Sirius' train of thought, "It takes a while to get used to a different currency." He then said, "Let me apologize in advance to you, Padfoot – the flat's a mess, boxes everywhere and I am not a good cook."

Sirius merely wagged his tail. A messy flat sounded like heaven compared to the cramped _grey_ Azkaban cells with the same dreary view, day in and day out. Quite frankly, he knew that Azkaban had spoiled places like beaches for him, as the crashing of waves against the rocky shore was a sound he would forever associate with the eight worst years of his life.

As they walked away towards an appropriate _Apparition _point – a different one this time – Sirius found himself mulling pieces of information together. Was this person _I_? There was an odd likeness in the man's face to someone he had seen before. One boat ride, and grocery store visit later, he was no more the wiser to solving the mystery. The man claimed he was from Massachusetts. From the cut of his clothes, Sirius knew that the man was clearly well off. The man did not appear squeamish about muggles – after all, they had just spent the past half an hour in a muggle grocery shop, and the man appeared very familiar with Muggle food items – he couldn't imagine someone like Lucius Malfoy shopping at such a place – and spoke like a Brit. But Sirius could hear the subtle Americanisms corrupting his speech, which lent credibility that the man did spend a chunk of time in America.

The familiar sensation of _Apparition _was felt again, and he found himself behind another large skip, which forced him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. He then watched the man grimace as he caught a full whiff of the stench of rotten organics. They were clearly in Muggle London now. A few more minutes of walking later, including up a flight of stairs, they were standing in front of a door. The man placed his palm gently on the polished wood of the door and unlocked the door with a small metallic key from his pocket.

True to the man's word, the flat was a mess and it was devoid of furnishings. Boxes were strewn all across the area that was intended to be the living room. There wasn't even a dining table, but Sirius saw that a large box had been flipped upside down, and covered with a simple green cloth. It was evident that the man had moved in very recently and hadn't quite got the time to get settled in properly. He was handed a piece of towel and he politely wiped the pads of his feet on the material before venturing any further inward.

"I suppose, you might like a shower." The man said after a moment of silence, "I've got spare clothes, and you can use my wand to resize them if you need to. And then I need to go retrieve my son from Ivan, before he decides to never agree to babysit him again."

_Who was Ivan?_ Sirius asked himself. Ivan didn't seem like an agent of Dumbledore. He shook his head sadly; what faith he had in the old man eroded as the years had languished by, rather like the rocks of Azkaban being eaten away by the waves of the seawater. A pawn, that's what he had been to the old man. He had been thrown into fucking Azkaban without even a trial. He understood that Wizarding Britain had wanted a bloody scapegoat for the events of _that_ _night_ over eight years back, but Dumbledore could have at least vouched for a trial or at the very least, seek out the truth.

He realized that the mysterious I. must be this Ivan person the man spoke of.

Deciding that he would leave the thinking for later, he walked into one of the washrooms in the flat. The man came by a few seconds later with a neat stack of clothes. When the man left to give Sirius his privacy, he immediately transformed back to his human form, glad for a return to normalcy.

He surveyed his form in the mirror critically. He looked gaunt and his cheeks were sunken in. Streaks of grey adorned his once fine dark hair. He tugged at his beard experimentally, and decided that it was best that it should go, considering that he was going to be 'on the run' from the Ministry. They'd probably be looking for a dishevelled prisoner in a jumpsuit with wild hair and a big beard. He found a new razor and a can of shaving cream – he was surprised that the man owned such things.

Beard disposed of; he stripped himself out of the loathed grey prison jumpsuit, took his shower and washed the years' worth of grime from his torso and hair. It wasn't that Azkaban didn't give showers but that the showers were timed and scarce, not to mention unpleasantly icy cold. He dried himself off with a nice fuzzy thick towel – good quality – Sirius noted with appreciation. He picked out a maroon shirt; it was as close to Gryffindor-red that was offered and quickly got dressed. It was nice to wear colour again and the shade gave him some connection to the distant past. The clothes hung on his malnourished frame. The water from his wet hair dripped onto his shirt and he sighed.

He wanted his wand back.

When he was done, he walked out of the bathroom. The man was sitting at the overturned cardboard box with a plateful of sandwiches, two glassfuls of milk and some of those delicious-looking chocolate cupcakes that they had just bought. He watched the man scrutinize him curiously. He had just realized that the man had rather intense green eyes, which his dog-vision had perceived as grey. Those eyes seemed to reveal more than the man's face, but Sirius could sense the careful set of barriers that occluded the mind. Remus had been an expert and that git of a man, Snivellus, had been too.

The raven-haired man summoned his wand with a flick of his wrist and offered it to him. With some clumsiness, he took the offered piece of wood. He dried his hair and resized his clothes after taking a few minutes to recall what the correct incantations and wand movements were. It took some effort to coax the magic from the wand, as the wand seemed to recognize him as a stranger.

Sirius smiled slightly at the man, rather happy that the man had trusted a stranger with his wand. He then quickly went back to the washroom to give his old prison-wear the good old _Incendio_. He vanished the ashes that remained.

"We will get you a proper wand." The man said, when Sirius returned his wand with mumbled thanks, "One without a trace. Eat, I know you are hungry."

Sirius sat down across the man, and helped himself to a sandwich – a combination of ham, cheese, tomato, and a dash of mayonnaise. Simple fare, but it was good enough for a man who had lived off prison grub. As he ate, he took closer stock of his surroundings. There were a set of painted wooden building blocks scattered on the wooden floor of the flat and another scattering of Lego over another box surface. He remembered the man saying that he had a son.

There were boxes labelled _Forest – clothes_, _Hadrian – clothes_, _kitchen supplies_, _notebooks_, gel _electrophoresis equipment _– whatever the hell that meant – _Potions apparatus, games_ and more. Some of the boxes had been opened. Two lives defined by the contents of boxes, Sirius mused. He then sighed sadly; he didn't even have any possessions as of this moment. There were other strange objects scattered around that Sirius didn't recognize, but he knew that he could discern their uses later.

The man in front of him was alternating his attention between a sandwich and a stapled booklet of Muggle printed paper. The front page was visible, albeit upside down from where Sirius was sitting and the title of the paper was way beyond him, but it was the authors listed underneath that intrigued him.

The man would occasionally frown, pause to pick up a red pen with his left hand, and scribble something on the paper.

Sirius then let out an audible gasp as he put two and two together, forcing the man to look at him.

"You – you are a Malfoy!" Sirius looked absolutely stunned.

The man looked extremely amused as he put the paper back down on the floor, "I was going to tell you, Lord Black, but you beat me to it."

Sirius shook his head frantically and with great horror, "Don't call me that – that's what they used to call my dear old father. The name is Sirius."

"Forest – it's nice to meet you in person. Your dog-form is rather charming." The man named Forest grinned.

Sirius couldn't help exclaiming, "But you don't behave like a Malfoy... no pompous air, no disdain of Muggles – you-you rescued a bloody Gryffindor for Merlin's sake!" Old prejudices were hard to let die, even if one had spent the past years staring at a grey wall.

Forest erupted into fits of laughter. It took a lot of effort for Sirius to make out Forest's next sentences, "I was Abraxas' bastard, you see. I went to school in America, since I looked too much like my father, to prevent any big scandal. He visited whenever he could and let me keep the family name. Being the bastard, I was free to pursue any interests that I may have, with none of the burdens that his legitimate son had." Forest suddenly got up from his cross-legged position on the floor and looked towards a clock on the wall. "I've got to go get my son. Be back soon." He grabbed his cupcake and strode out.

Sirius looked dazedly around the room as his brain tried to uptake Forest's words; he felt like he had just stumbled into a wall – _did he just have dinner with a Malfoy over a cardboard box for a table?_

He shrugged, before picking up the empty plate and glasses, and brought them to the nearby sink for washing. He might as well do something for the man who helped him out of that hellhole. Doing the dishes would be a step in the right direction.

_Oh, how Prongs would tease him, if he knew that old Padfoot was doing the dishes voluntarily._ He blinked rapidly, partially cursing the wave of nostalgia that his brain was inflicting upon him, but he was glad that Forest was out of the flat to see him in such a state.

Azkaban wasn't exactly the kind of environment where one could properly grieve for one's best friends.

/**Hannah**\

"We will go flying tomorrow, Hannah," Her father promised her, after picking her up and swinging her around, "I don't pick my workdays, and I really do wish your mom and I spent more time with you."

She smiled sadly when her dad put her back down. She hated being alone at home. It had been a novelty that wore off quickly. She looked up at her father who was tall, had hawkish facial features and short brown hair that stuck out at strategic angles, giving him a rakish look. He had always claimed that behind every good hairstyle, there was a comfortable pillow. He knew a lot about everything and spent what little time he had with her teaching her everything from mounting a broomstick properly to recognizing constellations in the night sky. He had told her that _flying was in her blood_. She knew that he worked as a physicist, working on future broom models for Nimbus but she really wished that he didn't have to work at all.

"I have to go now. Be good." He kissed her on the cheek and was gone in a blink of an eye. She knew that her father had _disapparated._ That was how adult wizards and witches got from place to place; he had told her when she had been younger.

'Dr. Richard Abbott', Hannah mused over her father's name. Doctor, because he had a PhD in some sort of physics from some fancy muggle university not in England. She had forgotten what kind physics, and which university her dad had gone to. Maybe somewhere in Germany, she thought. And that he loved to fly – be it brooms or airplanes. She knew that he was a wizard and he had told her that he would teach her how to use a wand someday. _You could do anything with magic_. He had said, and that the phrase _the sky is the limit_ was really nonsense. _There is no limit_. _You can go beyond the expanding confines of space, if you so damned pleased!_

Her mother had never been a big fan of her father's swearing, but her father had just chuckled and said that it was better relieving emotion through a nice morpheme or two, instead of pulling out a wand, or even a gun. Her father always used such difficult vocabulary and as a result Hannah knew way more words than someone of the same age. It was a blessing and a curse, but she had learned early on in school to keep her knowledge to herself and her test papers, and to try to stick to using simple words with her peers. She knew she wasn't brilliant like her father, but she had worked hard for what she knew.

Hannah still remembered days when she held an ordinary stick of wood, and ran around her old house, yelling things like _Stupefy_, _Incendio_ and _Avada Kedavra_ directed at imaginary Dark Lords and fantastical creatures, with the appropriate wand movements too, except for the latter. Her father had seen her that day, and had given her a stern talking to for the pretend usage of _Avada Kedavra_. _That, love, is not something that I want to hear cross your lips ever. This curse is not evil because it kills, no – there are numerous spells I can list to you that can do it just as effectively but it's the price you ultimately pay._ The expression on her father's face had been downright horrifying, and it looked as if he was another man altogether in that time.

He had gone on and explained something about souls in detail in a calmer manner, but Hannah had been too young to understand most of what he had said. She had never received such a stern talking to before, nor since. She also remembered asking him at the end, why then, did people use that unforgivable, and he had replied, _I don't know dear, but the best answer is fear._ She had felt a chill travel through her body and her father had hugged her closer to his chest.

A ring of the doorbell soon brought her out of reveries and eagerly she went to answer it. She smiled when she saw her neighbour, Harry, and she opened the door for him. They had conversed earlier this week, and Harry said that he could probably show up on Saturday.

"Hello, Harry, I am so glad you could come. Father just left..." She said, looking at her friend's too baggy clothes. She remembered seeing the nice new well-fitted clothes that Harry's cousin Dudley wore, and she felt a pang of sadness within. _Sometimes, the world was so damned unfair._

"The Dursleys just left for the zoo." Harry said tonelessly, just as she shut the front door behind him, and relocked it.

She reacted, "And they didn't take you? That's so horribly unfair!" She then sighed, knowing that exclaiming such things was of no help. Words couldn't make things better. They certainly didn't. Her father saying that he wished he could spend more time with her certainly didn't help her at all.

"Trust me, Hannah, it's best if I didn't."

"Your relatives seem so horrid."

Harry shrugged, so Hannah decided to tactfully change the topic, seeing that it wasn't something that Harry wanted to discuss, "Let's go to my room then. I want to show you some drawings I did."

Her room was painted sky-blue and was inhabited by good solid furniture that her father had claimed was 'Hannah-proofed' for her apparently wilder toddler days. The covers of her bed, her curtains and other objects in her room followed the dark brown wood and blue theme. Her father's old battered _Ravenclaw_ banner was strung across the wall with windows, overlooking Privet Drive; it was a memento that her father had kept from his old days and had given to her when she had expressed a liking for it. A simple collection of toys were kept in a plastic bucket in the corner of her room and a stuffed turtle, teddy bear and wolf guarded her sea-themed bed sheets and pillow.

She was currently into sketching creatures, both real and figments of the imagination. She had aimed for realism, and the best fruits of her labour were currently framed in wood that matched the rest of the furnishings. She showed Harry sketches of a sea turtle, a sleeping serpent dragon derived from Chinese myth, a lobster before her mother had cooked it for dinner amongst others. Harry looked over each work with meticulous care and silence; his solemn green eyes seemed to fixate on certain characteristics of her work for seemingly long periods of time.

"They look like they might just escape from the confines of the frames," Harry finally offered.

Hannah replied rather carelessly, "Sometimes, they are _real_."

"Are they?" Harry mused, his green eyes gleamed.

"Yeah, sometimes – if I think hard enough," Hannah said. She placed her finger on her pencil sketch of a sparrowhawk and swiped at its beak. There appeared to be a barely perceptible shimmer – a flicker of light – on the medium, and suddenly the small bird of prey leapt out of the page, wings outspread and flapping, still in its pencil colouration and followed her finger. She had done this before, while drawing, and hadn't thought of the significance of it, until now. It was normal play for her.

When she realized exactly what she was doing, she let the magic dissipate and she panicked. "Harry! Pretend you didn't see that! Bloody Merlin, my father –"

"My Aunt would call you a freak." Harry said dryly.

Hannah was startled out of her panic by Harry's words. They surprisingly hurt, but she rebounded. "But I am not a freak." She said defiantly, "Magic is real –"

"I know." Harry interrupted quietly, so quietly that Hannah almost missed it, "I didn't say you were. I can do it too."

"That was stupid." Hannah shook her head after a long minute of awkward silence. "Sometimes, I forget. My father told me not to show my magic to anyone..." And then a sudden flash of inspiration struck. Her father had explained to her that there were magical folk who hated muggles, so why couldn't the reverse be true? "Your relatives are horrid to you because you are one of us."

"One of us?" Harry looked somewhat perplexed.

"A wizard. I am a witch, of course." Hannah stated simply, "My father is one; my mom is a muggle."

"A what?"

"It's what wizards and witches call non-magical folk." Hannah explained, but Harry's attention seemed to be elsewhere, his eyes fixated on the sparrowhawk that she had made come alive with her juvenile display of magic.

"That's why your drawings are so real." He said, with the satisfaction of someone who had just solved a puzzle, "They are real."

"And that I had years of art lessons," Hannah added, "They don't teach you how to draw that way, unfortunately."

"Hm... I can't imagine why not..." Harry mused. "It would make art class in school so much more fun."

Hannah laughed.

/**Sirius**\

Several days later, Sirius found himself sitting on the hard wooden floor with the devil incarnate; the soul of the devil inhabited the body of a cute blond six year old, with Forest's green eyes. Between him and the boy sat a pile of plastic coloured sticks. He picked up a black plastic stick and carefully flicked a few off the pile, before 'accidentally' nudging several sticks by accident. _The goal was to pick up as many sticks as possible with a stick without touching against other sticks during the process._

"Oh no, Uncle Darius, you touch the green-blue-yellow sticks!" The little boy exclaimed, "My turn, my turn!"

"I did?" Sirius looked at the sticks with feigned wide-eyed innocence. He sighed inwardly at his new moniker. Forest and him had decided that it was best that he picked out a new name and afterwards, Sirius had introduced himself to the boy as his long lost Uncle Darius. It had taken him over an hour to find a name that he didn't hate. He found it was amazing how quickly things changed, from sitting in a cell in Azkaban, to playing pick-up sticks with a mini-Malfoy."I don't think I did!"

"Uh huh – you did!" Hadrian insisted and immediately snatched the black stick from Sirius' loose grip with a deft move. The little boy shifted his attention to the haphazardly scattered plastic sticks, just as Sirius collected the bunch of sticks that he had gathered the previous round. With surprising dexterity for someone his age, Hadrian flicked sticks with ease, before brushing against a green stick, but he claimed the stick anyways.

"Somebody cheated, somebody cheated," Sirius began chanting in a sing-song manner.

Hadrian took one look at Sirius, fixing a puppy-dog look upon his newfound Uncle, but Sirius continued his chant. Sirius had been on the giving-end of that look in his youth, and he wasn't going to fall for it anytime soon. Seeing that his old shenanigans weren't going to cut it, the little boy turned his attention to the sticks and suddenly grabbed the entire pile. He ran off shouting and dropping sticks in his haste, "I won! I won!"

Sighing again, Sirius got up from his position on the ground, and went after the rambunctious Hadrian, who was deriving way too much fun out of this at his expense. He managed to corner the little boy who had ran into his room, which only comprised of a mattress and a hastily transfigured night stand to hold the clothes that Forest had given to him. "Ten thousand thundering typhoons!" He roared at the boy, who had started to giggle loudly – taking that phrase from a _Tintin _comic book that he and Hadrian had been looking through the previous day – "Do you know what I do with cheaters?"

"Do you – eat little boys – for dinner – Captain?" Hadrian stammered through his nervous laughter.

"No," Sirius let his expression turn grave, "I have a special punishment for cheaters – I tickle them." He started tickling the little monster, who flailed, squealed and pleaded for mercy simultaneously.

"Well, I see you two are enjoying yourselves."

Both Sirius and Hadrian turned around with the boy still in hysterics. Sirius looked at the rather stern-looking Forest who had his arms folded against his chest. He then allowed his gaze to drop, following the trail of colourful pick-up sticks that led beyond the doorway into the living room.

It was Hadrian who regained his powers of speech first, "He ticked me!"

"But he cheated." Sirius pointed accusingly as Hadrian glared at him.

Forest looked like he was beginning to have a migraine. He disengaged one arm to rub at his temple. "Hadrian, what did I tell you about cheating? And Sirius, go get dressed – we are going to go get your wand today."

In short order, he was walking on all fours again in the streets of Muggle London while keeping his tail away from the ever roaming hands of Hadrian, who took pleasure in jumping in every puddle regardless of size which resulted in the saturation of the lower half of his father's cloak before they had even reached the _Leaky Cauldron_. He also looked wearily at each passerby, as if expecting someone to recognize him, but no one did. This was the first time he had gone out since he had arrived at Forest's flat and he found it incredibly disorienting; he had forgotten how busy London could be on a nice sunny-cloudy Saturday.

They entered into the dim interior of the _Leaky_, which was packed for the usual lunch rush. Wizards and witches were dressed in a variety of styles, from the standard robes to horrible combinations of Muggle attire, sat chatting away about the latest gossip while sipping at their drinks. He heard his name mentioned no more than thrice, in hushed tones of awe and fear as people speculated on the method that he had used to escape from Azkaban. _Were these the tones that people used to talk about Voldemort back in the day?_ He mused to himself. He didn't remember. _It had been too long._ He recognized Tom, who was hovering around the bar, who looked the same as ever. They exited at the back and Sirius watched Forest summon his wand from his left sleeve._ Some sort of a holster._ The man tapped out the familiar sequence of bricks, and the gateway to Magical London parted way to let them through.

He was surprised that Forest took the route to the more notorious _Knockturn Alley_, but the man soon stopped at a rather dismal looking store that gave every impression of not being open. Forest simply reached for the doorknob and opened the dusty door. The inside was much more pleasant than the exterior had been; the wooden maple floor gleamed, curios from all around the world sat on well-crafted shelves illuminated by ornate torches attached to the wall, rugs made of fur and oriental weave were strategically placed on the floor and paintings and even hand-woven tapestries adorned the stone walls. Sirius admired two large curved blades which crossed each other; they hung on an empty space of wall. They both had Russian names inscribed on their matte surfaces.

"You may transform back, Darius," Forest said, while keeping a firm grip on his son's hand. Hadrian was straining wildly to get at the knickknacks that were everywhere. "You are amongst friends."

"This isn't really a store." Sirius observed when he was human again.

Forest smiled, "Well, Ivan does sell wands, but that's the only official activity that goes on here. I am going to take Hadrian to get some ice cream from Fortescue's, since little kids have big ears and even bigger mouths. Go through the wall there," Forest pointed at the back, where a large tapestry depicting a battle between seafaring men hung, "And go up the stairs. I will be back when the meeting is over."

Nodding his thanks, Sirius made his way across the room, as Forest and his son headed back to the outside world. He still didn't know who Ivan was, but it looked like today was the day where that particular question would be answered. He walked through the wall, just as Forest had said, and found himself in another room, where wands sat in boxes lined with expensive looking fabrics on shelves, and a staircase lead up to the second floor.

He heard muffled voices, just as he mounted the stairs. When he reached the landing, he followed the sounds and finally knocked upon the door which concealed the origin of the voices. When the door opened, he was led inside by a brown haired man, whose hair stuck up as messily as Prongs' hair had.

"Welcome Lord Black, we've been expecting you."

Sirius found himself looking at an oriental looking man who had spoken with a strong Russian accent. His long hair was tied back with a red ribbon and strange looking black silk robes with red edging covered his torso. A quaint stone-looking teapot sat in front of him, adorned with a similar red ribbon and golden characters that Sirius could not recognize painted on the side. He took the seat facing away from the door he had entered, and his mysterious greeter pushed a saucer bearing a steaming teacup full of tea across the table which he accepted. He took a sip. It was strong, but filled his body with a warmth he hadn't felt since pre-Azkaban.

"Lord Black, it is a pleasure to see you again."

Sirius turned his head abruptly to the new speaker. He was astounded to see a goblin sitting beside him, dressed like a Muggle, with a crisp, well-pressed white shirt and a solid blue tie. His large pointed ears pointed through neat short blond hair. He was even more dumbfounded to realize that the goblin was the only one out of the three men sitting with him that he knew.

"Hurst..." He replied simply, and then curiously, "What brings the Head Goblin of Gringotts here, to a wand shop?"

Hurst laughed delightedly as if Sirius had made a funny joke, just as the oriental man spoke. "We are here for a very interesting and perhaps, rather vexing problem."

"Ivan means," The brown haired man interjected. _So that's Ivan_. Sirius mused. _The man who cared to find the truth_. "We are here to talk about –"

"Harry Potter – the boy-who-lived." Hurst finished, determined to have the finishing word.

"My godson..." Sirius hadn't been expecting this to be what the meeting was centered on. "Where and how has he been all these years?" He said rather wistfully. The few days that he had spent with Hadrian had made him realize how many moments, big and small, that he had missed in his own godson's growing up.

"Not well..." The brown haired man answered gravely. "Living with those miserable excuses of –"

Sirius felt the muscles in his dominant hand clench and unclench. His instincts were telling him that all was not well. _No... Please tell me anywhere but them... not after all we've told Dumbledore..._

"An aunt and uncle he had the misfortune to have. I've bought the house next door to the Dursleys..." The man stated, "Seem like rather ordinary muggles, until one peered deeper. Dumbledore hid Harry well... Very few magical folk are aware that the bright Lily Evans had a muggle sister. We only got on the right track two years ago. Rather irritating that he had been hidden right underneath our own noses."

_Remus... you knew._ Sirius found himself incredibly disappointed. _But then you've always respected Albus' wishes, didn't you?_ _Never questioned him – the greatest-wizard of all time._ He shook his head.

"So Richard, what have you discovered since buying 2 Privet Drive?" Ivan asked.

Richard looked rather thoughtfully for a few seconds, before taking a sip of his own tea. "Very weak wards around the house – blood wards tied to Harry – usually a good source of protection, but only if both parties feel familial affection for each other. An interesting choice of protection, but I must say, an oversight. Apart from that, surprisingly, no other magical barriers I could detect – believe me, I've gotten into the house myself when the Dursleys were out. Considering how weak those flimsy things are, easy to remove."

"And how about Harry, himself?" Sirius found himself asking as calmly as he could, despite the fury that he felt building up.

"Very difficult to say, Lord Black," Richard looked gravely at Sirius. "Neglect and abuse are always hard cases. He has appeared to make friends with my daughter, which I am glad. And Sirius, I know your godson's situation angers you, but rest assured, we are doing all we can. It hasn't been easy, and we must make sure that everything we do is properly done, and behind the shadows."

Sirius sighed – feeling somewhat calmer after Richard's words, but he found himself wondering why his godson was the subject of such interest to these people. He had become a lot more cynical during his reflections in Azkaban. The system had screwed him. It wasn't like the Ministry could do worse to him – lock him back into Azkaban? He'd just escape again or drown trying. And the Dementor's kiss? Anything was better than rotting in Azkaban for a lifetime – the blasted dementors were already beginning to suck out his life while he sat caged in the grey damned cell. But now, he wanted to find his godson. And he seriously wished that everyone would stop calling him Lord Black. It was to put it mildly, irritating.

"You might not trust us, Lord Black," Ivan mused, looking at Sirius carefully with his obsidian eyes, "But I understand. You've been wronged. You are angry. And you wonder what our motives are. All perfectly rational. It's true, we are interested in the bigger picture; we'd be stupid not to –"

Sirius laughed suddenly, glad that Ivan did understand him somewhat. And then he said, "So which side are you on?"

It was Richard who answered, "We aren't on any particular political side. There's been some very strange activity and events that have occurred in Wizarding Europe as a whole, and we have people, goblins and our other friends looking into what is going on. We have questions that need to be answered... For instance, why did Dumbledore not look for the truth eight years ago? For a wizard of his position and calibre – it wasn't a difficult game, as Ivan would tell you."

Hurst looked pointedly at the clock, "We better cut the tangents, because I will be due at Gringotts within the next hour. So, I was looking through James' affairs rather recently, and I found this." The goblin retrieved a sealed envelope towards Sirius, who looked rather baffled. "Open it. It's the Potters' will. Dumbledore requested it not to be executed until Harry was of age but now since you are here and certain laws dictate –"

"I was a witness." Sirius said solemnly, vaguely remembering that grim day where his two best friends who had loved each other composed their will together. Lily had been crying, James had his arm around her shoulders and was doing his best to not cry himself while baby Harry had been sleeping peacefully upstairs, completely oblivious. That had been after the prophecy had been read, and they had gone into hiding. He ripped it open and fished out the almost decade-old parchment. He knew what it said without needing to read it. "They wished for Harry to go to me after their death. They left everything to Harry."

"And since Gringotts is completely divorced from the British Ministry," Hurst said, as he fished in his coat pocket for a silver knife. Sirius picked up the knife from the table, not really listening to Hurst since he knew the pertinent law. He knew that Gringotts Law and British Wizarding Law were two separate things, and that he knew that he had the legal right to execute the contents of the will, since James had named him as such. He flattened out the parchment that bore the words writ long ago, ink that had lasted beyond their writers, and with a single drop of his blood, they blazed white hot.

* * *

A little birdie told me that reviews led to greater output.


	3. TBPF (3)

**The Inbetween – **By Slytherin's Dragon

**Part I(3): The Boy who Played with Fire**

Don't misread Henry for Harry - my sister did and she was confused.

And again, thanks for the support; you guys are all awesome!

* * *

/**Henry**\

Before dawn, a smallish raven-haired boy crept slowly through long dim hallways. Carved torches, bearing the likeness of the face of the wolf of his House, were fueled with the old magic. They burned bluish-white. He knew that they would burn on, long after his own remains have crumbled to dust. The family motto flashed into his mind: _To Endure..._ Father had explained that it was the way of the Winters, to watch and wait, to outlast whatever conflict the rest of the world was involved in; there would always be a Winters at the _Winterwind_ till the end of time, or the end of humanity itself, whichever came first. It was this kind of thinking that had led their family to be politically neutral during the years of turmoil, and that he had found it dull that neither of his parents had been involved in the war between light and dark. He could recall Father saying that he would understand someday, that the world wasn't strictly light or strictly dark and that the light too, can destroy.

He held a wooden sword in one hand, the blade tucked in between his elbow and his side. He dashed quietly down the spiral steps that led to the main foyer, decorated in neutral shades of brown and the same torches that lit the halls. He tried his best to avert his eyes from the gaze of a large wolf, carved out of white stone that sat on the mantel of the largest fireplace in the house. The old white she-wolf that was the sigil of their House had always made him uncomfortable. She seemed real to him, and on occasion, he would see her eyes burning blue, the same shade of fiery blue that the torches held in his dreams. It had only gotten worse as he had grown older; and it was awkward, trying to avoid eye contact with the carvings, tapestries and everywhere else that she appeared on or in. No amount of rationalizations on his part or his parents' part could make the discomfort go away – _No, Henry, she's just a statue. Statues aren't alive nor can they move. Nor do they want anything of you._

His eyes wandered to something else in the great hall. A wondrous sword, the stuff of legends, hung on the wall on two spikes of iridescent blue metal, its blade as sharp as the day it was forged. The weapon itself was taller than him; the dark hilt decorated with a carving of a wolf holding the pommel in its jaw and several ancient runes for the word _Frostbite_ was etched into the blade. The blade itself was the part that captivated the boy's attention, made out of some unusual combination of metal, magic and method, to produce an effect that made the blade shimmer and translucent like ice. His uncle had told him that _Frostbite_ was made by his great ancestor, Bran Winters and his best friend, a goblin, whose name the boy could not remember.

_Shit_. The boy's gaze shifted from the sword to a clock nearby, and he realized that he was late. He bolted through the hall, past another passageway, and finally through the front doors. The chilly air of predawn smacked into him, despite wearing an old worn long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants in a similar condition. _Why the bloody hell is it so cold out in the summer? _He shivered, but ran on in his bare feet anyways. How he missed his nice warm bed! He was almost out of breath when he finally reached his destination, an enormous oak tree near a lake that crossed halfway into the property.

"You're late."

The boy looked up at Uncle, whose face looked as if it had been carved out of marble. The man's long wavy brown hair extended beyond his shoulders, and a large bushy beard hid his chin. He looked nothing like Father, who was Uncle's brother. Uncle was a big man who the boy used to call Bear in his toddlerhood. A greatsword with a blade the length of the man's long legs dug deep into the soil, while his massive hands rested easily on the golden hilt. The runes inscribed on the blade pronounced the weapon's name as _ad_ _Infinitium_. _Forever – to infinity_ – Henry thought, _goblin-wrought_. But she was nowhere as beautiful as _Frostbite_.

"I am sorry." The boy looked awkwardly downwards, kicking the grass with his feet. "It's so damned early..."

Uncle said rather sternly, "You wanted to learn how to fight, Henry. It requires discipline. It requires dedication. Not to mention your parents –"

"I know." Henry sighed. His parents weren't the biggest supporters of their son learning how to wield a blade, but nevertheless, Uncle and him had been having these daily rendezvous at Merlin-damned-knows-how-early. He had has suspicions that his parents knew about these meetings, but they had done nothing. _Maybe his father thought that it was a way that he could learn discipline_. Henry mused to himself. _Or, maybe, for once, to allow him to exercise his own will in making decisions that mattered._

He knew who he was, a wild, witty, intelligent ten-year-old, who enjoyed getting in and out of trouble, especially with his best friend Blaise. But some damned twist of fate had determined that he was the next heir of the Winters' family and... he had to deal with all the inevitable crap that went with such a position. Had to spend the majority of his time in learning how to be all proper, learn about the who's who, money management and so on and so forth, while all he wanted to do was pilfer apple pies from his mother, climb trees, ride his horse out on the grounds, play chess and fly on his broom. Preferably with Blaise, even though Blaise sucked at chess and at any game that required strategy. He was ten, for Merlin's sake! He didn't want the bloody responsibility – he wanted to be a kid.

It wasn't fair. Of course, if he had been someone like Draco Malfoy, he would have lapped it all up. All proud and aristocratic, so sure that his heritage entitled him to be the king-of-the-world – it made him sick. And the Malfoys weren't even one of the original wizarding Houses of Europe; they had humbler roots that they had long buried since they had come into prominence. The Blacks and the Bones were the other two old Houses that still endured, while the Potters, Boots, Greengrasses, Longbottoms and other wizarding families in Europe had lost their original names through the maternal line – the original seven Houses.

But frankly, he really didn't care, and he had a feeling that his father, sometimes, didn't either. He had noticed that his father's closest friends were those who weren't high-born. There were never any feelings of pureblood supremacy in their house, or species discrimination either – the house-elves were family, and his father usually played chess with Rogan, a goblin, on a weekly basis. His parents only tolerated such attitudes in parties depending on what discriminations was the norm of that time or whoever was present. It seemed like such a bloody farce! But perhaps, his own disinterest of high society was also the fault of his parents, who had taught him to think, observe and formulate his own ideas of the world from his empirical experiences. Maybe he would have been better off if he had been brainwashed like Draco, or like some of the other heirs of the other pureblood rich families.

Knowledge didn't bring bliss – ignorance did – he concluded.

He was pulled out of his mind-rant by his uncle, who had conjured his own wooden sword form nowhere and yelled, "Be ready!"

He fell into a familiar stance and for the next hour and a bit, thrust, parried, blocked, and locked wooden blades with his crouching Uncle, who was a relentless drillmaster. He never seemed to tire and always had a new trick up his sleeve to disarm his nephew. He tried to be fluid and nimble like water, unyielding and tough as stone, and as cunning as a serpent, but the inevitable result was that he was bruised, battered, and exhausted by the end of it. So exhausted that he had stumbled and slipped right into the shallows of the lake –_ damnit!_

Uncle laughed heartily, before extending a burly arm out to haul him out of the drink. He flopped onto the grass and tilted his face upwards to see the purple and yellowy hued skies created by the rising sun. He dropped his wooden sword somewhere in the process.

"You did good today." Uncle said, and he felt a small rise of pride. "We will make a swordsman out of you yet. And you are right –"

Henry interjected, still dazed, "Right about what?"

"Your parents know. In fact, here comes your mother, now!"

It took him a few seconds to locate Mother, in her grey squirrel _Animagi _form, who streaked vertically down the trunk of the great oak tree that shaded the area they had battled. When her last back paw reached the ground, the squirrel's torso lengthened upwards, and Mother stood in front of the massive tree trunk. Her dirty-blonde hair was disheveled from the journey between the manor and the tree, and her blue silk robes blew gently with the cool breeze. Somehow, Henry thought that Mother looked happier and prettier in the state she was in now, than when she was all dressed up for a ball.

"Arya," Uncle greeted curtly, after retrieving _ad Infinitium _from the earth its point had been buried in for the duration of Henry's training with a single easy tug.

"Clement," Mother said, mimicking the exact intonation that Uncle used to greet her. The contrast between Mother and Uncle was almost comical, the rugged large bear-man in a worn brownish-green cloak and the slender lady dressed in fine silks. But there was a similarity too; an aura of wildness surrounded them both, which Henry knew Father lacked. Father liked to be indoors, with his books and research on Curses, surrounded by a few close friends.

"I saw you coming." Uncle stated simply.

Mother said with great amusement, "Then how come I watched my son fight for the past half an hour, or so? From the trees." Henry could see that Uncle was looking at Mother with an incredulous expression. He interpreted as saying – _you are a devil-woman!_ She changed the trajectory of the conversation, "Maybe it seems I was wrong. Henry should learn how to use a sword." She said something else too, but it was so quiet that Henry missed it. Uncle's expression grew darker with her words, but then he turned to look at his nephew. His mother did too, and gave Henry the come-here gesture. Her expression was unreadable, but Henry could have sworn that she had looked somewhat wistful as if longing for years past.

He didn't know why.

He compliantly got up, albeit slowly, and retrieved his wooden weapon from the ground near the lake, before walking over to Mother. She whipped out her wand and dried his drenched clothing. She put her arm around Henry's shoulders, and said, "Go shower and change into something nice."

Henry looked suspiciously at Mother, "Why?" _Please not a boring society party. Damn it! _Sunday was the only day he had free from his lessons.

Mother sighed with a tinge of humor, "So young, yet so distrusting." She continued, "Just go, Henry – you will like it, I promise. Blaise will be there. I need to talk to your uncle."

Henry reluctantly walked away, but Uncle's words caught his attention, and he hid behind a tree to hear more.

"Do you really expect your son to enjoy such things? He's the product of your wildness, Arya, and Edward's cynicism. He doesn't give a shit about high-society, and frankly, I know you don't either. You had simpler beginnings."

_Well, that's true._ Henry agreed with his Uncle's assessment of himself, just as he heard Mother yell with great exasperation, "Henry, I know you are still there – don't keep your father waiting!"

Henry sighed, and he wondered just what this 'thing' with Blaise and Father was. The last thing he heard of Mother and Uncle's conversation was Mother saying sadly, "He will have to learn to play the game soon just like everyone else. Edward -."

_What game?_ Henry wondered as he ambled back to the _Winterwind_. He didn't bother to try and eavesdrop longer; it never boded well for anyone who defied Mother. She was the one who should have been a _Slytherin_, not his father. _And who the bloody hell was everyone else playing this game?_ _His parents? Uncle? _And why did that sentence fill him with more dread than it seemingly ought – _games were supposed to fun, weren't they_? _And what's that about Father?_

/**Hannah**\

Hannah was woken up by a succession of nudges, and her father saying.

"Wake up Hannah; I am taking you somewhere today."

She wiped the sleepiness from her eyes, before stretching out her limbs. "What time is it?" She turned her head around to see the blue curtains, and there wasn't any sign of light poking through the fabric.

"Before the sunrise," He said with a small smile. The light from outside her room illuminated that her father was already dressed in his usual formal attire of shirt and tie. "Get ready; your mother already left for work."

Hannah nodded as she saw her father leave the room. She divested her pyjamas in favour of jeans and a plain t-shirt. It was Sunday, she remembered, and her mother had a big case or something to prepare for or something like that. It wasn't unusual that she worked weekends. She dashed to the washroom to do the mundane work: brush her teeth, run the brush through her hair a few times and wash her face. She wondered what Harry was up to. He was probably asleep in the cupboard he called his room, she thought. He had slowly revealed a few of his dark secrets in the passing weeks of August, mostly via indirect means. _It angered her to know that there were people like the Dursleys in this world._ When she was done, she flung the washcloth on the rack, and eagerly ran downstairs. She wondered where her father would take her so early in the morning.

Her father was out on the patio in their backyard. He conjured a comfortable plastic lawn chair for her and handed her a toasted bagel containing strips of bacon, egg and an assortment of vegetables on a china plate cooked without magic. She knew that her father preferred cooking the Muggle way. He was oddly quiet, looking towards the fragment of sun that slowly peaked out of the horizon. She wondered what he was thinking. She knew better than to ask her father where they were going. He liked surprises and today, the silence of her normally talkative father indicated that this was no ordinary day.

"I am going to teach you how to _Apparate_ before the summer wanes." Her father finally said in an odd sort of way. He didn't turn back to look at her.

Hannah asked, after swallowing her bite of sandwich, "But don't you need a wand?"

"I will teach you how to do it with, and without one." Her father said grimly, "I am afraid. Very afraid." He then turned to scrutinize her, she knew that she had surprise written on her face – her father had always seemed so invincible; the man who believed that there were no limits. "I fear the day when I cannot protect you. If you know how to _Apparate_, you can escape many a dire situation."

"But why would I need protecting?" Hannah asked suspiciously. "There's no one out to get me, is there?"

Her father looked grave. "One can never know for sure. There are very troubling times ahead, dear. It never hurts to be ready."

"You had an argument with mom the other day..." Hannah stated, remembering a situation from a few days ago. It had been so unexpected – her parents never fought. Or at least, within her hearing. But then again, she was supposed to be asleep at that time. Her mom had been really upset the morrow after. "Was that about me?"

Her father conjured another lawn chair and sat down beside her. He sighed, and fidgeted with his fingers. "She wanted you to have a normal life." He finally said, "But, I am afraid, that in your case, dear – that normal will be impossible. It's because of choices I've made in the past and present –"

"You weren't some kind of drug-dealer or crook or something like that?" Hannah exclaimed, trying to puzzle her wits to figure out what her father meant.

"No," Her father actually laughed. But the sound had a darker quality that wasn't usually there. She smiled slightly; she didn't know whether to be relieved or not. "Definitely not."

"But illegal?" Hannah persisted. "I mean, teaching me how to _Apparate _is illegal..."

"Ah, Hannah," Her father ruffled her hair fondly. "The British Ministry is all a front, dear –"

"So are you some secret spy or something?" Hannah deduced, appealing to her imagination.

"I've never thought of it that way." His father said seriously. "I've always thought myself as a collector of information. But ever since you've been born, my activities have been surprisingly, what's that word you like so much, legal. Not a word of this to your mother or anyone else, mind you."

"She doesn't know?" Hannah asked. She was astonished.

Her father suddenly looked ashen. She could see all the creases on his face. There was a strange look in his tired brown eyes. "No. Sometimes I wish I could tell her – I love her more than anything in the world but I realize that this is a burden I must carry. The less she knows, the safer she will be."

"Then why tell me?" Hannah said quietly.

"So you will know." Her father said simply. She felt her blood run cold. "You are a witch, love, and I think you have the makings of being a highly capable one. You can protect yourself in ways your mother can't. Just in case, one day I don't show up at home –"

"No!" Hannah shook her head fiercely, denying the possibility. Not her father; the man who had taught her so much, the man who had shown her how to open her wings to soar. She had finished her bagel sandwich. She got up from her chair, and clung onto her father desperately. She felt an arm snake around her back. It was a small comfort for the price of revelation. This was something right out of a thriller book that she had read before – maybe _Agatha Christie? – _but she felt no thrill. Just despair. She then asked, with a rather worried look. "What if someone attempts to read my mind?" She vaguely remembered reading stories about mind-readers in histories past.

Her father got up from the chair and placed her back on the ground. His face had returned to its normal state. He lectured, "The art of elucidating information from another mind is known as _Legilimency_." He then further explained, "The art of hiding information from another mind is known as _Occlumency_. It is relatively simple –"

Hannah sighed – most things were simple to her father. But she listened on, "The best way I find, is to gather the secrets you want no one to ever possess, and envelop them with the experiences of the ordinary. The more embarrassing the moments are – the better. No one is expecting a ten-year-old to know the tricks of the mind, and if all they see is the normal memories of a ten-year-old, then there won't be any trouble at all." He then said after a brief pause, where he looked at her critically to see if she was getting the information, "But I am not worried about _that_. I've covered my tracks very well; it would be highly improbable for such a thing to occur. But it is always a good idea to be prepared for all possibilities. Let's go, Hannah, we are going to be late."

As they walked back into the house, she watched her father summon his wand. A few very simple swishes later, the chairs were gone, and a barely perceptible glimmer glowed around the area they had been standing in. She knew enough about magic that several wards had been taken down, along with the vanishing of the chairs. She observed that her father's casting style was very simple, there were no elaborate swishes in his wandwork compared to other magical folk that she had seen with a wand. It was quick, efficient, and she now knew that under the right conditions – deadly.

She and her father walked out of the front door of their house. Her father pulled out the ring of Muggle keys from the pocket of his jacket and locked the door. They walked the way to the park, passing by the cookie-cutter houses with model lawns, an ordinary neighbourhood on an ordinary day. And when they reached a specific place hidden within the trees, they _Apparated_ without a sound.

They were in _Diagon Alley_ now. She had been here several times in her youth, with both her parents. She knew now that her mother found it awkward, being in such a magical location. What was it like to know that magic exists, but because due to the circumstances of one's birth, one was destined to never be a part of it? She wondered if her mom had ever wanted to be a part of the magical world that was her father's world.

It was clearly still early, few people strode the streets, and very few shops were open, considering that it was Sunday. They reached an empty looking shop with a dusty front, and her father opened the door. This, for some reason, felt very familiar to Hannah, and when she walked into the well-furnished room of knickknacks, she recognized that she had indeed been here once before.

Her father said, offering an explanation for her realization. "We came here before. You were four. You loved the pirate-ship-in-the-bottle." He then pointed at the object in question – a large glass bottle with a simple cork stopper, and an extremely detailed pirate rig gently rocked on the water within. Animated little pirate seadogs and wenches squabbled and fought on the surfaces of the ship, and occasionally a figure would walk the plank. Hannah smiled vaguely at the artefact. She didn't remember, but it seemed like something that her younger self would have liked.

She strode over to the crossed blades with the Russian names next, and her father lifted one of them from the wall. She estimated that the sword was as long as her torso and head combined. The blade was wickedly curved.

"These belonged to one man." Her father told her. "Would you like to hold it?"

Hannah nodded, and her father placed the hilt in her hand. It was lighter than she thought it ought to be, but she knew that if she held it for several minutes, it would fatigue her. Experimentally, she swung it into empty space. She imagined what it would be like to have both weapons in her hands, but suddenly she had the image of her father holding both blades in a crossed position, fighting desperately against an equally matched faceless assailant.

She shivered, despite the warmth of the room. She almost dropped the blade, but her father grabbed the hilt back before it could fall from her temporarily nerveless fingers.

"You have to remember," Her father said solemnly, "That swords were made to kill; no matter how beautiful they look, or what the history of the blade is."

They were interrupted by a man who seemed to materialize from a wall. He was unfamiliar to Hannah – tall, thin, with long raven black hair tied back in a ponytail. Hannah thought that he was the epitome of elegance. He was dressed in dark green robes, and a well-cut Muggle grey shirt and green tie which matched his robes was visible. He walked over to the last remaining sword on the wall, and picked it up. With a sudden movement, he brandished it at her father. Seeing that her father didn't seem too concerned with the man's actions, she watched as the elegant man summoned his wand and pointed it at the blade. Her father repeated the other man's actions on the blade that Hannah had been holding.

The man struck first.

She watched her father and the unknown man fight around the room with the curved blades, mindful of the various rugs on the floor. The sound of steel on steel was loud and echoed throughout the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two other formally robed figures emerge from the wall that her father's opponent had come from. One was short, and the other slightly taller. Upon closer observation, she realized that they looked around her age. They both had jet-black hair, but one was dark, while the other was fair.

"What's going on here?" The shorter boy asked her.

Hannah shrugged, "I don't know, actually. That man is my father and the other man..."

"We heard the racket, so we decided to see –" The taller boy explained, "It was getting dull in there, with Henry's father talking to a man named Ivan –"

"Not to mention that we weren't allowed to listen in," The boy that Hannah deduced was Henry said. "I think my parents are keeping way too many secrets –"

"Yeah... tell me about it..." Hannah said forlornly, remembering the incident that had happened earlier this morning. "For instance, I never knew my father could fight with a blade."

"So, what's your name?" The taller boy asked. His eyes were a shade of friendly dark brown, and he wore simple black robes.

"Hannah," She said, "And you?"

"Blaise Zabini and this ugly mug here is Henry Winters." The boy said mischievously. Hannah watched with amusement when the shorter boy smacked his friend with a dusty book from the shelf behind them. She liked the short boy's blue eyes, which seemed to twinkle with mischief. Blaise allowed Henry to get one good hit in, before playfully ducking out of the way.

The conversation ended when Hannah's father disarmed the other man in a blurred flash, sending the weapon flying out of the other man's hand. The curved blade landed on the ground with a clang. Hannah felt that her father could have ended the duel much sooner, but had chosen to prolong it. It reminded her of a cat toying with a mouse.

"I want to fight like that someday." Henry had an envious expression on his face, "Your father's amazing. He could probably give my Uncle a run for his money."

Hannah watched her father pick up the other blade and hang both blades back on the wall, before going over to check on the defeated man.

"Richard," The other man greeted, with a slight bow. He said reassuringly, "No harm done."

Her father returned the bow back, "Forest," He returned the greeting. "It's generally not good etiquette to stick sharp objects in front of the faces of friends."

The man named Forest laughed. It was a surprisingly boyish laugh. "Pot, meet kettle. You remember last week, don't you?"

"No, I frankly don't." Her father said with a quirked amused eyebrow. "So where's your son?"

"Asleep. You know, Hadrian snuck into Darius' room to sleep last night. Sometimes, I really don't know what to do what that boy of mine." Forest sighed. "I thought I was a patient man, until –"

"You should ask Edward about _his_ son." Her father said with a playful grin. "Trust me, that young scamp can make any child tame in comparison."

"And, we are so out of here." Henry looked horrified at the new turn in conversation and grabbed Blaise and Hannah by their arms. He dragged them both through the seemingly solid tapestry-covered wall, while Blaise complained loudly all the way. "But I wanna hear!" Henry was surprisingly very strong for his age and build.

"Oh shut up," Henry snapped playfully once they had passed through the wall, "You know, half the shit I was deep in as a toddler involved you."

"But I want to hear about the other half that I wasn't buried in!" Blaise was scrambling to go back through the wall. Hannah had sneakily untangled herself from Henry's grip, and she laughed when both boys fell over clumsily in their tug-of-war. Blaise started crawling through the wall, but Henry grabbed him by the leg and pulled hard, yanking Blaise back by a decimetre or so.

"Help me Hannah, save my dignity, please?" The boy asked her with pleading eyes and a solemn expression. Hannah laughed at Henry's seriousness and she bent over to grab Blaise' other leg. Between the two of them, Blaise had no chance. They dragged the dark boy's struggling form all the way over to the staircase at the far corner of the second room. Henry gave her a nod of thanks and a playful grin, and she found herself grinning back.

Blaise said with mock-defiance, "That's alright; I already know all of that boy's dirty little secrets." Henry stuck out his tongue. She and Henry were sitting on the middle of the stairs, with Blaise sprawled in between them, looking up at them. Hannah found herself envious of their friendship. Sure it was built on jokes and mischief, but there was something deeper. Something that she had never had in a friend.

Her father was her best friend, but this was different.

"How long have you known each other?" Hannah asked, curiously.

"Ten Merlin-bloody years too long if you ask me," Henry answered, "And mind you, we are both ten."

"What a coincidence," Hannah exclaimed, "I am ten too. Aw... that's cute, you two playing in a crib together."

Both boys blushed furiously at her tease, and she laughed again. She then said seriously, "I wonder why our parents brought us here."

"We wonder that too." Henry nodded, "My mom said I'd enjoy it, but... I don't know."

"There you lot are," Hannah's father emerged from the tapestry. "Henry, Blaise and Hannah –"

"Dr. Abbott," Blaise and Henry replied politely back simultaneously, leaving Hannah to wonder how these two boys knew her father. There was so much she didn't know. But her thoughts were cut short when Henry asked, "So, why in Merlin are we here?"

"Ah," Her father said with grin, "It's a special day. What do you see in this room?"

Hannah looked around. The beige painted walls were lined with dark shelves. A table with a comfortable plushy looking chair occupied the centre of the room. And sitting on those shelves, and the apparent messy work table surface were sticks of wood –

"Wands!" Henry shouted excitedly, beating Hannah to her conclusion, "We are going to get our wands!"

"But I thought we don't get them till we are eleven." Blaise was surprised. But Hannah could see the delight flickering in his eyes.

"When we go to Hogwarts," Hannah added, "So are we really going to get our wands, father?"

Her father nodded, "That's the plan. Now, pick one and give it a wave. Careful now, don't point them at anyone!" He reprimanded when Blaise picked out a long dark wand and poked it experimentally in Henry's direction. A wisp of smoke came out, and Hannah's father snatched it out of the boy's hand, "No good, Blaise – try another."

Hannah eagerly reached for the closest stick she could find. A sandy wand, rather short and squat found its way into her hand, and she gave it a wave. It compliantly shot a shower of golden sparks from the tip which excited her, but her father shook his head, "Not the best fit. Try another, dear."

It was after at least ten minutes of trying later when another man came down the steps. This man wore a robe that reminded her of a kimono – it was black with golden dragons – and a golden sash was tied around the man's waist. His black hair was in a long braid and his black eyes surveyed the scene beneath. "Ah, the first wands," The man stated with a wistful air, "In most cases, the wand picks the wizard, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime is forged. But in other notable cases, the wizard must earn the wand's respect. Let me see."

Hannah froze when the strange man approached her. "Richard's daughter, aren't you?" She barely nodded before he went on to whisper in her ear, "Your father has courage. Sometimes, I think that society is too quick to impose judgement on a person's character. I see the same brand of courage burning in you."

The man walked over to the shelves of wands and looked thoughtfully at them, while Hannah was trying to think about what modicum of courage she actually possessed. She had always thought of herself as shy and socially awkward. It had taken weeks of being cooped up in a house for her to make friends with Harry, while Henry and Blaise seemed to have that special ability to draw out the people around them. It was called charm, she mused. And she had been terrified by her father's reveal earlier this morning. She didn't think she was brave. She watched the man come back, with a pale wand.

"Twelve and three-quarters of an inch. Yew. Dragon-heartstring from a fierce Hungarian Horntail that died a natural death. Temperamental, but I think you can tame it, my dear." The man said gently.

Hannah took the wand from the exotic looking man and she felt it. The wand felt natural in her grip, but she could feel the tumultuous energy that threatened to break loose. It was wild; it was raw. It reminded her of how she felt earlier in the day, when she was furious with Harry's relatives. But at the same time, there was something in that sensation that reminded her of the despair she had felt at dawn. _Dragons had feelings _was her realization. _It_ was as if the Hungarian Horntail that had donated the heartstring to the wand had never died, and was trying to express itself.

Some instinct convinced her to incant _Incendio_ like she had done with mundane sticks in the past. An enormous jet of blue fire leapt out of the wand. The blue fire morphed itself into a fiery dragon and it roared loudly and angrily, startling the two boys who were still picking out wands under the watchful eye of her father.

"Impressive." The man who had handed the wand to her said as the dragon finally vanished from view. "I've always wondered what differences existed between the properties of dragon heartstring from a dragon that died of natural causes, versus one that was killed with magic of wizards. Magic was always a confounding variable..." The man drifted off in thought, "It's yours. But control is what you need to learn."

The man then walked off to talk to Blaise in the same fashion that he had talked to Hannah, and she found herself looking at her wand. It was a rather twisted stick of wood, and an odd engraving of a rune was on the bottom of the stick. Her father walked over to her, but she continued to stare at her new wand. She said, without lifting her gaze.

"I can feel the dragon within. I don't think it's temperamental. It's just angry and sad."

"Wandlore is a rather mystical area of science, Hannah. Not much concrete fact is known about the subject. Although Ivan knows more about wands than most wandmakers..." Her father mused, "You could be right, dear."

"But why would the dragon be angry and sad?" Hannah asked, more to herself than her father.

/**Harry**\

Overall, it had been a decent summer for Harry. His newfound teleportation skills allowed him to escape confinement to his cupboard; the library was his favourite haunt. It also provided him with the ability to escape from Dudley and his gang of fellow nitwits. They would run after him like bloodhounds hot on a scent, and when Harry turned a corner, he would do his little disappearing act onto a nearby roof, tree, or even back into his cupboard. He derived a grim sort of satisfaction whenever he peered over the roof, to see Dudley and his oversized buddies stumble around in confusion at the mysterious disappearance of their prey. It never occurred to them to look up. But of course, they gave up their Harry-Hunting game soon afterwards – Dudley was never one to suffer repeated failure well, and was in a foul mood for most of the summer, as one of his favourite pastimes was no longer readily available.

At the end of August, Harry was sitting at Hannah's dining table; a marble table covered with a glass surface. He helped himself to a turkey sandwich from a blue-floral patterned china platter. The Dursleys were out again, and he usually took those opportunities to come visit Hannah for a bit. She would always insist that he stayed to eat. And when he saw the Dursleys car back in the driveway, he would conveniently _Apparate _back into his cupboard. Life was good.

"Guess what I got yesterday!" Hannah exclaimed as he munched on his sandwich.

"What did you get?"

"I got a wand." Hannah flicked her wrist, and a warped stick appeared in her hand. It was pale in colouration. "And I can do magic with it too!" She looked at her wand and whispered, "_Lumos_." A ray of blindingly bright light pulsated through the wand, and Harry was forced to shield his eyes from the intensity. "_Nox!_" Hannah exclaimed, extinguishing the light. "Sorry about that Harry, I've been trying to get the intensity down a bit."

"It's alright." Harry said in his usual polite manner. He then said, "I thought you were supposed to get a wand when you were eleven?"

Hannah sighed, "Well, technically you are supposed to get it when you are eleven, but father got this for me. He wanted to teach me how to _Apparate_."

"What's that?" Harry asked curiously.

"It's a bit like teleportation –" Hannah stopped when she heard a loud crack, and Harry reappeared from behind her.

"Like that?" Harry watched Hannah turn her head around in astonishment, "Yeah, exactly like that. But my father can do it without a sound –"

Harry willed himself back to his original spot at the table. This time his _Apparition_ was silent. "Like this?"

Hannah nodded and exclaimed, "Wow, and no one taught you how to do that? My father told me it took him a month to learn how to _Apparate _silently and another to eliminate the turn associated with it."

"Turn?" Harry was confused.

Hannah explained, "When you watch a wizard or witch _Apparate_, normally you will see them spin in a half circle before they are able to successfully _Apparate_."

"To be fair," Harry admitted, "I did spend the entire summer learning how to do it silently. I never knew that the standard protocol had a turning motion associated with it. I was running away from Dudley when I first _Apparated_." It felt nice to finally have the correct name for his convenient travelling method.

"Your cousin's such a bully." Hannah frowned, "I was bullied when I was younger at school. It wasn't nice. I used big words, and I didn't realize that everyone around me had no idea what they meant."

"People don't like things they don't understand." Harry observed.

Hannah agreed, "No, they don't." But Harry then watched Hannah freeze, and then she shook her head. She said rather oddly, "But sometimes they do."

"Hannah, I am home!" A man's voice called from the front door.

Harry said, "I should _Apparate_ away."

Hannah shook her head furiously again, "No, stay. Stay and meet my father."

Reluctantly, Harry stayed where he was, and calmly started nibbling on his sandwich again. He had seen Hannah's father before, but this was the first time that they would meet face-to-face.

"I see we have a visitor." Hannah's father strode into the kitchen and smiled at both of them. "Hullo, Harry. It's nice to meet you. You can call me Richard."

Harry nodded, as Richard continued, "I wonder..."

"What do you wonder?" Harry asked. He was finding the situation a little awkward.

The man sighed and pulled out the chair beside his daughter. He sat down rather wearily and scrutinized Harry rather carefully. "I wonder about many things. You are one of them. I am going to tell you both a story."

Harry watched Hannah nod, and he nodded too.

"Once upon a time, there lived a boy. He had no mother and no father, and he was sent away to live in a Muggle orphanage. He was magical. On his eleventh birthday, he went away to Hogwarts and he excelled. Students revered him, students feared him, and teachers loved him. For he had great charm, you see. He believed in one thing – power. He despised weakness and thought that the way to be the greatest wizard in the world was to vanquish Death itself."

"Voldemort," Hannah interrupted. Upon seeing Harry's confusion, she said, "The boy in the story became known as the Dark Lord who called himself Lord Voldemort. He amassed a band of followers, and he was determined to destroy the weak. He believed that those with Muggle ancestry were inferior, and committed genocide."

Richard continued the tale. Harry had a feeling that it was very overly simplified. "One day, a prophecy of sorts was made, that claimed that a boy could vanquish him. There was an eavesdropper, and he brought the message back to his Master. And he struck. He killed they boy's father, and when he went to go kill the son, his mother took the curse that was meant for the boy. When he tried to kill the boy again, the curse rebounded, and something very odd happened that night. The house burned down, killing all within, with the exception of the boy. The witnesses say: it was silver fire, tinged with green."

"It was me." Harry found himself saying as he connected the dots between dreams and reality. "I burned the house down. I don't know why the flames were green, but the silver was mine. I used to dream about it every night, the screams of a girl, the laughter of a madman, and fire. Lots of fire." And then he frowned, as he remembered something else. "My aunt and uncle said they died in a car crash. But they lied, didn't they? I always knew there was something to those dreams. I am not going to be in some sort of trouble, am I?"

Richard laughed, "No, far from that, actually. For you see, since that night, the Dark Lord was never seen or heard from again."

"I killed him?" Harry asked, "That night, when I burned the house down?"

"No one knows what happened that night. It was a meeting of magicks that transcends any knowledge that we mere wizards know. There are many theories, ranging from your mother's sacrifice, to your own unique abilities." Richard sighed. There was a brief silence, before he asked, "How would you like to leave the Dursleys forever, Harry?"

Harry was stunned. He observed the man's face carefully. It had been years since he had thought of such a concept as possible. "Really? Leave them?"

"They never had the legal right to your custody, Harry." Richard said gravely, "But that's another long story, with lots of unanswered questions. In fact, I think it's a good time to disappear. I've made all the necessary preparations. Your Aunt and Uncle are away, aren't they?"

Harry nodded. "They are at some 'Best Lawn Competition' or something like that."

Richard laughed, "And they bought it – hook, line and sinker."

"You planned this?"

Richard smiled sadly, "I've been watching from afar for many months now, Harry. It has taken me six long years to track you down, and almost two more to discreetly observe the circumstances that you were bound to. If you say the word, I will take you somewhere where the people who put you with Dursleys cannot find you."

"The people who put –" Harry felt very odd. It was a strange burning sensation, and he felt his heart beat hard in his chest. The idea was almost unfathomable. Who in their bloody right mind would place a magical child with the Dursleys who eschewed everything out of the ordinary? He had trusted Hannah all summer long, but could he extend such a trust to her father? And, there was something pleasant about someone taking such effort to find his whereabouts, to check up on how he was. _Eight years!_ He knew he had already hit rock-bottom with the Dursleys. There was only one way to go, and that was up. He then said the life-altering words. "I want to leave the Dursleys."

Richard nodded. "Then we don't have much time to waste. Hannah, I will be back."

Harry watched Richard grab his arm from across the table, and without a warning, he felt the familiar stomach-turning sensation of _Apparition_.

* * *

Was not my intention to leave it at such a cliffie - oh well!

Review?


	4. TBPF (4)

**The Inbetween** – By Slytherin's Dragon

**Part I(4): The Boy who Played with Fire **

I don't own HP. I do own Drs. Forest Malfoy and Richard Abbott. I also own Hadrian, Silly, Henry, Edward, Arya and Ivan.

Making up for the lack of Harry in the beginning!

* * *

/**Harry**\

When Harry felt his feet hit solid ground, he found himself shrouded in darkness. He instinctively reached for his flames, which flashed to life above his right palm, illuminating his immediate surroundings. He was in some sort of a room, with wooden bookshelves teeming with books, a writing desk covered in stuff and there was even a bed in one corner. He saw Richard briefly glance over his fire.

"Intriguing," Richard muttered, more to himself than to Harry. The man then walked away, and threw the curtains open, letting in the light of day. Harry killed his flames, as Richard said mundanely. "These curtains are impervious to light. I prefer not to have any form of light present when I take a nap."

"Where are we?" Harry asked.

"Very difficult to define, I am afraid." Richard looked at Harry thoughtfully. "This flat has no address. The physics behind it –"

"Physics?" Harry interjected rather sharply. From what he understood about magic, it seemed to defy Muggle notions of science.

Harry was even more astonished to see Richard quirk a grin, "And that's where most of us magical folk err in our understanding of magic. Magic merely adds another layer of complexity into what we understand about the physical world. If you truly want to understand magic, Harry, you must first start from the simple – things like gravity and energy. As I was saying –"

"But the flames seem to come from nowhere..." Harry mulled over what Richard had explained. There couldn't be a simple logical explanation for everything, could there?

"Ah, that's for you to figure out, Harry. It's not my place to spoon-feed anyone, especially you." Richard said rather mysteriously with a note of humour, "Observe again, and again. As I've told Hannah many times, there is no limit to what you can do with magic once you understand the rules. Then you can go and break them all." There was a roguish smirk on the man's face. "But anyways, the plan is that you will stay here for the next little while. There are groceries in the fridge, you may have my room, clothes are located in the drawer over there," Richard pointed to a chest of drawers in the corner of the room, made out of the same dark wood that the rest of the furnishings were made up of. "And I suppose there are enough things to amuse you in this flat. I won't tell you what to do, or not to do. You've had enough bloody restrictions in your life. My only recommendation is that you stay in this flat until you can figure out how to disguise yourself - namely the hair and scar."

"And where are you going?" Harry asked.

Richard merely said, "To work. A wizard's got to work for a living. I will be back in the evening." And without another sound, Richard Abbott _Apparated_ away, leaving Harry staring at the spot he had once stood.

_That was certainly very anticlimactic_. Harry mused, as he observed the room again. Richard's room was larger than Dudley's room had been back at 4 Privet Drive – the bed was a comfortable looking queen-size, a matching nightstand stood beside the bed, the drapes were of dark blue velvet, and there was even a large dark blue beanbag chair near the window. The flat was clearly a non-magical one, as Harry experimentally flicked a light switch up and down, watching the light flicker from the fixture on the ceiling. _But then again, I didn't exactly have anything to expect, really._ He found himself wondering, why exactly Richard Abbott would have a secret flat hidden away. _There is more to this than what meets the eye_.

He walked over to the drawer that Richard had said the clothes were in, and pulled it out. He took out a set of clothing after carefully examining the contents, and headed to the washroom that was attached to the bedroom. He decided to shower, considering that it had been almost a week since his last one, helping himself to the shampoo and soap present. When he was done, he dried himself off on a nice fuzzy maroon towel. He put on the clothes, which to his surprise, actually fit him well. He had picked a well-tailored dark green collared shirt, and a pair of dark jeans. He also pulled on a pair of dark grey socks – he had never owned a pair of socks that weren't faded or without holes in the fabric. _He looked pretty damned well in the mirror, for once in his life in clothes that had been bought for him_. He permitted himself a smile, and he sighed, the Dursleys had never spent that much money or effort on him ever.

He then turned to the pile of rags on the ground, the remnants of the time he had spent with the Dursleys. They instantly disintegrated as Harry thought of fire. He carefully scooped up the ashes off the clean tiled floor with his hands, and realized that there were no trash cans anywhere. _Wizards banished things into non-being_. Harry remembered. _Could he do that without a wand?_ And then Richard's advice came into his mind again –_you must understand the rules before you can break them_ – he didn't know a thing regarding the art of vanishing objects. _Did it even matter if he didn't understand the principles? What did Richard mean by rules? What rules?_

_But then, how did he learn how to Apparate? _

_Such difficult problems can be derived from one pile of ashes_. Harry walked out of the washroom, through the bedroom, and into the rest of the flat. The rest of the flat consisted of a large living room with a kitchen and another bathroom attached. There was a set of dark leather couches, a dark wooded coffee table with a glass surface, a stone fireplace against the wall separating the bedroom and living room, a whiteboard hanging against a wall covered in Richard's neat slanted writing and a bookshelf attached to the wall next to the fireplace. The same type of dark blue velvet drapes that adorned the windows in the bedroom were utilized for the living room as well. There was a glass door that led out into the barren balcony. For a hideout, Harry mused, it was very nice and well-kept. There were also various flora growing around the flat: a huge money tree near the windows, long leafy plants in suspended plastic planters hung from the ceiling, cacti in quaint small pots and a small marble box containing lucky bamboo that sat on the coffee table. A dining table and another bookshelf sat near the divide between kitchen and living room.

He found a plastic grocery bag in the kitchen to temporarily dispose of his rubbish.

_What rules are there in magic?_ Harry asked himself. He wished Richard had elaborated more, even though the man had seemed reluctant to offer too much explanation. He had learned how to Apparate through self-preservation. He had wished for somewhere safe, and somehow, magic granted him safety. Whenever he _Apparated _now, he visualized clearly where exactly he needed to go. He removed a few bits of ash from the bag, and placed them on the dark wooded coffee table in front of him. He sat down on the comfortable leather couch, and willed the ashes to be gone.

The ashes were still obstinately there, so Harry tried picturing the exact same coffee table without the ashes in his mind. He tried many variants of asking and visualizing, but at the end of twenty minutes, Harry scooped up the ashes and placed them right back into the bag. Clearly, he rationalized, visualizing did not apply to the vanishment of objects, or he was missing something – probably some fundamental principle that he wasn't aware of, overlooked, or some aspect of the act of vanishing that he had not taken into consideration.

_A break would be nice_. Harry got up from the couch, made his way to the kitchen, and opened the fridge in the kitchen. Richard had obviously shopped beforehand, and there were all sorts of fresh goodies on the shelves. He shut it, and opened the freezer and pulled a bucketful of ice cream – cookies and cream. He hunted around for a bowl, and found one in the dishwasher. He scooped some ice cream with a spoon, found in a drawer next to the dishwasher, and placed the dessert back in the freezer.

He sat at the dining table, a simple circular table made up of smooth polished wood that matched the dark teak floors of the flat and dug into his ice cream. _So this is what it feels like to have ice cream whenever you wanted._ It then occurred to Harry that he didn't even ask Richard about school. He knew that Hannah and Dudley were going to school starting this week, but what about him? But he then shrugged seconds later, he would rather be here, free to do what he pleased. Harry remembered the shelves of books, and he knew that he would like nothing better to endeavour to read them all.

A stack of old-papers on the bookshelf nearby caught his eye, and he pulled them out. The paper didn't have the feel and look of normal paper, but then, Hannah had mentioned in passing that most magical folks used parchment and quills, which had seemed so old-fashioned to Harry. Each neatly folded unit of paper had the word _Daily Prophet_ emblazoned at the top, and much to Harry's astonishment, the pictures _moved_. Fortunately, the text didn't, so Harry set himself to reading the articles.

He quickly realized that these were articles from years back. Seven generous bowlfuls of ice cream and three newspapers later, Harry felt that he had grasped some inkling on how Wizarding Britain worked as well as a comfortably full stomach. There was a Minister, there were magical equivalents of policemen known as _Aurors_, _Diagon Alley_ was the hub of Wizarding Britain, so and so forth. He still had plenty of questions, but he knew he could address them later in other literature or ask Richard.

He spent the rest of the evening engrossed in books from Richard's bookshelves. He quickly discovered that the man had books on both magical and non-magical subjects, and busied himself with a book of basic physics, considering that Richard had emphasized that knowledge of how the physical world worked could help him understand magic and the easiest book on _Transfiguration_ he could find on the shelves. It had sounded interesting.

When Richard reappeared sometime in the evening, Harry had almost fallen asleep on the couch. He wearily rubbed his eyes just as Richard dropped something long on the coffee table in front of him.

'_Silly boy, not taking Silly with him!'_ The hissing registered in Harry's tired brain. The snake almost looked affronted that Harry had not taken him with him.

Harry looked amused, _'I wasn't aware that you were domesticated.'_

'_Silly, silly, it gets boring slithering around the same garden all day.'_ The snake slithered off the table seemingly ignoring Harry's jibe, and onto the couch that Harry was sitting on. Silly coiled up beside Harry. Harry patted the snake's neck, and he almost could've sworn he heard a strange hissing sound that reminded him of the purr of a well-satisfied cat.

"Your snake Silly was following me when I got home." Richard said with great amusement, his brown eyes twinkling. "I've seen you talk to the snake before, so I brought him here. Somehow he sensed that I've taken you away. He wasn't too happy with me when I used a bit of magic to ensure he was one-hundred percent snake. You can't trust anything these days." The man's eyes then fell on the books that Harry had around him, "A dash of Physics and _Transfiguration_? Interesting – so tell me, exactly what did you learn today?"

So Harry gave Richard a recount on his thinking process with the vanishing of the ashes, his readings of the _Daily Prophet_, and what he had read. He had read about kinematics – things like velocity, acceleration and a description of how things moved in circles – and he had managed to get through some theory on shrinking and enlargement of mundane objects. The latter wasn't too horribly useful to Harry, considering that he didn't have a wand. He wondered if Richard could procure him a wand, like he had done for his daughter.

Richard was silent through the entirety of Harry's talking until Harry finally finished. He said, "Intriguing that you tried to vanish something today; I wouldn't give up on it if I were you. You should always take in what you read in the old _Daily Prophet_ with a grain of salt, but I am not discouraging you from reading them. It brings an interesting perspective into the Wizarding World, and because you've had no experiences within it, I think you are better equipped to read between the lines than most people. Did you play with fire at all?"

Harry shook his head, and Richard sighed. "I think you will find it extremely helpful in your future magical endeavours to discover what one would call the _source of magic_. Anyways, it's getting really late – go to bed, Harry. Tomorrow will be another day."

Harry trudged sleepily off to bed with Silly following behind him, too fatigued to even bother thinking about potential sources of magic and what Richard meant by snakes that weren't snakes.

\**4**/

The next day, Harry was woken up by bright sunlight, as he had forgotten to close the curtains the night before. Silly had disappeared somewhere, and he decided to brush his teeth with a brand new blue toothbrush that he had found in a cabinet. _It was nice to have new things_. Harry mused that this singular fact may be the reason why Dudley broke so many things. When he walked out to the kitchen, he was surprised to see Silly lying on the dining table, a mini-bulge in his skinny midsection, with a silly contented grin. His tongue was poking out.

'_Silly boy, hawk-man brought Silly, plump rat. Silly forgive hawk-man for pointing magic stick at Silly.'_ He hissed an explanation, just as Harry started rummaging around the kitchen for a frying pan. Harry found himself some nice large eggs, a tomato, some thick slices of ham and other ingredients. He made an omelet. He had just realized that he had neglected to eat dinner the night before as the massive amount of ice-cream ingested had been enough to stave off hunger. He also poured some fresh milk in a mug and set a full bowl of water next to the relaxing Silly's head. As Harry ate, he watched as Silly stretched out his tongue a bit further to lap at the water, in a very lazy fashion.

'_So how did you know I was gone?'_

'_Silly boy, snakes sense with their tongues. Silly knew silly-boy was gone because silly-boy never returned to the house. Air tasted different, silly. Silly followed hawk-man, because Silly saw hawk-man enter girl house, and silly-boy vanished shortly after.'_ Silly provided his explanation, as Harry asked, _'Do you know anything about magic?'_

'_Silly does not know anything about magic. No more than Silly-boy.'_

Harry sighed, after he scooped up the dirty plate and cup for washing. Silly asked Harry to light the fireplace's logs, and Harry obligingly did. He returned to the physics text that he had been reading. Strange things like dx/dt and other squiggly operations started showing up, so he skipped the section to Newtonian Forces. He would go and figure out Calculus later.

In the afternoon, after a nice lunch of sandwiches – Harry didn't feel like taking too much time to cook – he sat down again on the leather couch, and focused his thoughts to fire. The flames burned brightly in his palms, and Harry fused the two separate fires from each palm into one ball of fire. He concentrated on letting them grow big and small. _Find the source of magic_ was what Richard had hinted at the night before. _So what exactly was allowing him to control the flames_, Harry thought. He then practiced twisting the flames into different shapes, a skill that he had grown quite adept at during the last few months.

When he watched the flames recede into his palms once more, a flash of inspiration struck. _There was some unknown source of energy that served as fuel for his fire_. _And was this source of energy – magic?_ He let the flames erupt from his palm once more, and this time he traced the energy path from the centre axis of his body, through his shoulders, arms, wrists and finally palms. He clenched his fists, and the flames died. He stretched out his fingers, and allowed the energy to move past his palm, and up to his fingers, he had five tendrils of flames ignite from each digit of his finger on each hand. It was like his fingers were candles. _This was seriously cool_. _Or rather, hot._

There was something else he had realized too. His flames didn't seem to set anything on fire, unless he willed it. With some amusement, he focused again on his central axis down his torso, where he thought the energy seemed to remain dormant, and willed the energy upwards towards his mouth. He breathed an enormous jet of silver fire. He then spent the next twenty minutes bathing everything in the living room in his harmless silver flames. _He was a dragon..._ When he had everything around him engulfed in silver fire, he willed them away. The flames vanished instantly without a trace, and everything in the living room was unharmed.

Harry had been proud to show Richard his fire-breathing prowess later that night, and he had also provided a detailed explanation on how he thought magic worked. Richard, who had looked extremely amused by the entire performance, had said, "Interesting – you should consider writing everything down. Don't be too sure that your hypothesis is the right one. A proper inquiring mind should always be open to novel insights, which I am sure you will come across in the next days or so."

Harry also discussed about his newfound knowledge of Newton's Forces and kinematics, and the calculus he didn't touch. The physics was something Richard was willing to discuss in detail, and the pair must have been at it for two hours before the man had gotten up, bade Harry good-night, and _Apparated _away. His mind churning from hypothetical and sometimes outrageous physics problems involving elephants and learning about derivatives – some of the problems had required calculus to solve – Harry turned himself into bed after a quick hot shower.

When he was under the blue blanket, Harry found himself thinking about fathers. He was only familiar with two such beings – Uncle Vernon and Richard Abbott, and he marvelled at how different the two really were. Hannah was a lucky girl, and in some ways, Harry realized that Dudley was the product of his upbringing. _What was that saying?_ _That dogs were a reflection of the families they lived in?_ Did it apply to children as well?

That led to thoughts about his own father. Someone Potter. He didn't even know the name of his own father. What was he like as a man? Was he more of a Richard Abbott, or a Vernon Dursley – two rather extreme ends of a scale? He didn't know what to make of Hannah's father. As a rule, he didn't trust adults, not after his Aunt and Uncle. He didn't know what Richard's motivations were. But, even though he was temporarily confined to this flat, he felt freer than he had ever felt in his life.

\**4**/

He fell asleep, and his dream started innocently enough. He was in snake-form again, and he was slithering away at some forest. The silver-green flames of the burning house in his old dreams came into view, and he felt himself grow upwards. He was human again, but this time, there was another boy standing beside him. The boy was dressed in fine-cut green robes; while he himself was dressed in the nice green shirt that he had worn the previous day, and the same pair of comfortable jeans. The other boy was dark-eyed, pale, and seemed to have an easy charm to his person.

"Who are you?" Harry found himself asking.

"Tom." The boy smiled. There was a glimmer of something in his dark eyes. "I know you are Harry. I've been waiting for you."

"Have you?" Harry looked inquisitively at the boy.

"Yes. For years." The boy mused. "You see that fire? We made it together. Silver is yours, and green is mine. Silver and green – the colour of Slytherin, our great ancestor."

"You are a fire mage too?"

The boy laughed. It sounded innocent, boyish. "No, Harry. My gift lies elsewhere. My gift is the _Avada Kedavra_. The green light of power." He flicked his wrist gracefully, and a wand that looked like Hannah's sat in his hand. It was slightly longer though. He gently stroked the tip lovingly, with his long pale fingers.

"Who is Slytherin?" Harry suddenly asked.

"You don't know?" The boy looked shocked, "What rock have you been living under? But anyways, he's one the greatest wizards that had ever lived. He could talk to snakes, and believed in the purity of the blood. Blood is everything..."

"Is it?"

"It is." The boy said with great conviction. Harry saw the shadow in the boy's face. It no longer looked boyish, but much older. "Think about it, Harry. We will be powerful together, strong together. The silver to my green, the green to your silver – we will rule the world together." There was a certain pleading look in the eyes of the speaker.

"Is this real?" Harry asked after a seemingly long time. The house continued to burn. There was a crack, as a beam collapsed in the flames.

"It can be, my brother, my silver." Tom smiled; his silky voice caressed the last part of the sentence. It was boyish and charming again. His dark eyes danced with mirth. He put his arm around Harry's thin shoulders.

The arm was frigid.

Harry found it incredibly discomforting.

Tom was stealing his warmth.

Harry and Tom watched the fire spread beyond the house, destroying everything in its path. When he woke up the next morning, his scar seared, as if his forehead had been exposed to the fire, the only physical remnant of the dream.

\**4**/

Rifling through the contents of Richard's desk seemed to reveal bits and pieces of the man's life. There was a colourful Rubik's cube sitting beside a still-picture of a younger Richard carrying his daughter with one strong arm with Hannah's mother presumably beside him, a scattering of various quills from different avian species, mundane markers, pencils and pens, and parchment everywhere. The contents of the parchment were varied, with hastily scribbled integrals, strange runes, and even names. One name gripped at him in particular – Tom Marvolo Riddle – the name Tom seemed to be familiar to him._ Right, in his dreams._ He extracted the parchment from the piles of paper. Aside from the name written neatly at the centre of the blank parchment, there was nothing else. Sighing in disappointment, Harry folded the paper away and placed it in his pocket. _It might be important_.

He looked through the only drawer on the writing desk. There were pictures - pictures of Hannah, her father and her mother. There were pictures of people and places not known to Harry. Some of these pictures moved, like the ones he had seen in the _Daily Prophet_. He took a picture of Richard standing somewhere where Harry had never been, and he flipped it over. There was the same neat slanted writing, but he could not read it. It took him a moment to realize that it was written in German. Inscribed at the bottom of the paragraph was the location – Munich, and a date – many long years ago, before he or Hannah had been born. He continued turning photos over, but everything was in German.

'_Nosy boy – nosy, nosy, nosy..." _The familiar slithering of Silly could be heard from behind him, _'Nosy, nosy, nosy!'_

Harry sighed at the snake, _'Not being nosy – Richard said I could do anything I like in this flat. Besides, it's interesting!'_

Finding nothing of particular interest, Harry shut the drawer. He headed back to the living room, where he willed his flames to come again. _Hang on; do I have to burn this energy I release from my body?_ Harry asked himself. He snuffed out his fire, and this time he let his energy spread out from his hands. He mentally pushed at Silly's metallic water bowl, which sat a metre away on the floor. Much to his surprise, he watched as the bowl slid a millimetre, a centimetre and finally approximately half a metre. He was exhausted, as Silly looked as perplexed as a snake could be at the bowl that had seemingly moved by itself. Cautiously, as he was aware of his weariness, he moved other objects – a coin that he had found on the sofa and even a wriggling protesting Silly himself. His exhaustion was proportional to the mass, and the distance he pushed the objects.

'_Stop it, silly-boy – not funny!'_ The snake hissed out his indignation.

Harry gave the snake a smirk, before he set his sights to levitating the coin, through pushing upwards. _Gravity is a bitch_. Harry thought, after he levitated the coin up several centimetres. It was a lot more tiring than simply pushing an object horizontal to the coffee table or the floor. He was forced to drop it when he felt his energy deplete. He slumped down on the leather sofa afterwards.

When Richard showed up around dinnertime, bearing pizza, Harry ravenously devoured half the large pizza. The man simply observed Harry, as Silly was playing with the mouse offering that Richard had dropped on the floor shortly after his arrival.

"So, I learned I can do other things with the energy." Harry said, after wiping his mouth with some napkins.

"Really?" Richard quirked an inquisitive eyebrow, "That's new."

Harry showed him his new levitation trick with the coin, which he surprisingly found easier to do now, than in the afternoon. Richard merely nodded, just as Harry said, "And I can't read German, either."

Richard laughed, "You've been looking through my stuff, haven't you? Hannah does that all the time, whenever I bring her here. She can read some German. I don't keep a diary, or a journal. I keep pictures, and write a little entry on the back of them. I lived in Munich during my university days. Picked up the German there."

The next hour and a bit turned out to be another discussion in physics, with an emphasis on different kinds of energy. At the end of it, Richard quizzed Harry on things that they had talked about the previous day, the math, and some new problems based on kinematics.

"Good, you are a quick learner," Richard said reassuringly, after Harry felt like he had failed the first test in his life that he had deliberately tried to pass. "Hard problems teach you how to think and analyze rationally, something severely lacking in British magical education."

Harry then asked, "So am I ever going back to school again? I mean, I rather have something like this, where I can pick and read what I like and play with magic."

Richard grinned, "You don't ever have to if you don't want to. For a boy your age, you engulf books that were intended for people much older than you are." Before Richard _Apparated_ away, he left Harry with one last parting shot,"Try _Apparating _in this flat."

Puzzled, Harry tried visualizing himself somewhere else in the living room, like beside the fireplace, but just as he felt the sensation of _Apparition_ hit his gut, he felt himself thrown backwards. Baffled, he tried again, only to land flat on his back against the couch. He heard the odd sound of laughter, and he turned around to see Silly rolling on the floor. _'Not funny.'_ He reprimanded Silly, who started wriggling in what Harry perceived as full-blown snake hysterics.

\**4**/

He was standing beside the dark-eyed boy again; they were both dressed in robes. Dark green robes, so dark that they looked black, were draped over his companion's torso. Harry wore robes of silver which sparkled under the light of the sun. They were standing on a hill, overlooking a dreary looking village.

"Tom, what are we doing here?" Harry asked the boy.

"This is where I was born – Little Hangleton." The boy said darkly. He then turned to Harry, and looked at him thoughtfully, "We aren't too much different, aren't we, silver?" Upon seeing that Harry was quiet, he continued, "Abandoned by our parents, left to languish in depressing places that refuse to take into account of our extraordinary talents, and do you even feel, silver?"

Harry remained mute, and Tom was clearly a little agitated. "To be alive – when I have my wand in my hand, I feel alive. Do you have a wand, my silver?"

"No." Harry said simply, thinking that Tom was a little mentally unstable. "I don't."

Tom shook his head in a disappointed way, but Harry said suddenly with great force. He didn't need pity, certainly not Tom's pity. "I don't need a wand. I have no need of meagre magical sticks, Tom." Harry fixed his own green eyes on Tom, who stepped back from Harry's sudden intense scrutiny. "Watch," Harry said sharply. He broke a branch from a tree while Tom watched him wild-eyed, and he said for effect rather than need, "_Incendio_!"

Massive silver flames erupted from the tip of Harry's mundane piece of wood. It immediately set the wood of the nearby tree on fire, and the grass around the two boys began to burn. The flames grew hotter, thicker, and Harry watched as Tom began to sweat from the heat. He tossed the stick that had seemed to beget the fire to the flames.

"This is when I feel alive." Harry almost yelled amidst the crackling of the fire and the snapping of twigs that almost drowned his voice out. He watched Tom's odd expression as his flames raced across the grass, and started to consume the village.

When the flames finally fizzled out, the only things that weren't burnt to ashes was the round patch of grass that Tom and Harry had been standing upon and themselves – green and silver. Nothing remained of the village, and not a living tree could be seen for kilometres around. Tom's eyes gleamed at the scorched earth with pleasure. "Such power, my silver – my soul hungers for it – lusts for it, even." Tom turned to reach for Harry's scar, but Harry slapped his arm away.

"It's mine." Harry hissed. "Get your own fire."

Tom shook his head, and muttered, "So selfish..."

\**4**/

Harry woke up the next day with a massive headache. This Tom person was not doing wonders for his sleep. He wished Tom would just leave him alone. And that village he had burned down in his dreams – that was a Muggle village, wasn't it? Without thinking much about what he was doing, he waved his arm at the curtains, and with some exertion, he parted the velvet with his magic. _And didn't he say that he was born there?_ Why would a person who hated non-magical folk so much have a connection to that village? He shook his head. _There were so many questions, and not enough answers_. _Was Tom a hypocrite?_ He washed his face with a towel and hot water, willing the ache in his head to go away, but to no avail.

Silly was in his usual position on the wooden table, bellyful of whatever treat Richard had brought by in earlier. He roasted potato wedges, made scrambled eggs, and sizzled sausages to break his fast. He rekindled the flames in the fireplace, and the silly snake slithered there to take a nap.

He read his physics – thermodynamics today – and worked on some calculus and trigonometry that Richard had recommended the night before, before moving onto magic. His magic was like a muscle, the more he used it, the stronger it seemed to get. Gravity no longer seemed to be a huge problem, and he spent his afternoon lifting Silly around with his magic. The snake had protested at first, but grew to enjoy his gravity defying adventures.

After a dinner of baked salmon and stir-fried greens – Harry had discovered a slab of salmon in the fridge – he perused the shelves in Richard's bedroom again. This time, he removed a few books on Politics and History. There were books on Muggle-Wizard relations and an old handwritten book entitled _Wizard Wars_. His interest in the old book increased exponentially when he examined it further – there were detailed drawings of eminent politicians and scenes of fighting. But there was something odd about the people that seemed to be depicted in the book – long-fingered and toed, with pointed ears. When he flipped to the introduction, he realized that the book was the work of a Goblin. Harry knew that goblins ran Gringotts, the Wizarding bank, from what he had read in the _Daily Prophets_. _Wouldn't it be interesting to read something written by a non-human?_

Just to be fair, Harry also removed a book entitled _The Goblin Wars_, and took advantage of the blue beanbag chair in the corner of the room to read. As he had surmised, both books talked about the same sets of wars. When midnight had passed, Harry yawned and he put down the books carefully. He went to go take a shower and felt the tiniest feeling of something missing when he realized Richard had not shown up this evening.

\**4**/

The days passed. The days were filled with learning, as Harry absorbed material in books. He had branched out from physics, and found himself learning about human anatomy and physiology, chemical reactions, Wizarding etiquette, more history, evolution and everything else. Harry was very indiscriminating when it came to books. Whenever Richard came by, the two would sit and converse about a wide range of subjects. Richard wasn't much of a biologist, but Harry knew that physics was where his heart was at and took the opportunity to get as much knowledge as he could from the man.

Harry also found a beginner's German textbook and started flipping through that so he could try and read Richard's photo-journal. Hannah's handwriting was present in the book, so Harry inferred that at some point, Hannah had gone through the text as well, probably under her father's tutelage.

Silly had gone around and called him nosy again.

He had also mastered integrals and derivatives in the two weeks he had been in the flat. Trigonometry would occasionally trip him up, but Harry knew he had a good grounding of the concepts.

The days weren't just filled with work; however, Harry found several board games hidden around the flat, and he and Silly spent many a pleasant hour in front of the roaring silver fire in the fireplace figuring them out. Harry liked games like chess, while Silly enjoyed simpler games such as _Snakes and Ladders_. But then again, Silly enjoyed _Battleships_ too after Harry had explained to Silly regarding the concept of an alphanumeric system. The silly snake took great pleasure in sinking Harry's little plastic ships, so much so that he had made up a smug snake dance. Cards were out of the question, since Silly had great difficulty in handling them.

The nights were a different story. He wished that Tom would go away. There were maniac dreams, full of death and destruction, while Tom was trying to get Harry to accept him as an older brother or something even more sinister. A seduction of sorts – Tom had tried using power, charming persuasion, the 'we are similar' tactic, the 'we are alone in the world' approach and innumerable other strategies – he had bloody lost count – and all it was accomplishing was giving Harry a first-class headache in the morning. Tom seemed overly obsessed with Harry's scar though. _There must be a link between my scar and Tom. _

He was sitting again at the wooden table, twirling a fork idly in a plateful of leftover spaghetti that he had made for dinner the night prior. As he ate, he pondered a chessboard that sat at the centre of the table. The board was carved out of a thick and exotic piece of wood and the detailed chessmen stood at attention, as if waiting for Harry to make a move. Richard had explained that this old non-magical chess set was a prize that he had won from his old university days back in Munich. The man had made his previous move while Harry had still been in bed. Harry hadn't won a game yet against the man, but he was determined to at least achieve a stalemate this time.

After he had eaten and moved his knight, Harry stood up and used his energy to scrub his fork and plate at the sink. He was thinking about Tom again, and what he knew about him. A boy who hated Muggles, but has Muggle ancestry. A boy who craved power; Harry had caught the gleam of envy after that day when he had torched Little Hangleton to ashes. And last night, Tom had taken Harry to a graveyard, where Tom's father's bones had been laid to rest. Tom had spent the rest of the night blowing the tombstones in the cemetery to bits, while Harry watched with disinterest. He had been more interested in the tombstones themselves than Tom. _It was pathetic really._ Harry mused idly that Tom's little problem with Muggles stemmed from daddy-issues and not because of the notion that Muggles were inferior.

It was an interesting hypothesis to consider, anyways.

He still hadn't figured out why he couldn't _Apparate _properly in the flat, nor had he discovered how to vanish objects. But his energy reserves had strengthened considerably when he started using magic in all of his daily tasks, such as moving things around and levitating his books while he was reading them. Richard still hadn't provided Harry with a wand yet, but after that day where he had incinerated Little Hangleton in his dreams, he had developed a possible reason why. Wizards and witches were too attached to their wands. Just by watching how Tom had lovingly stroked his wand had cemented the fact of wizard-wand dependence in Harry's mind. Harry was sure that he could come up witha hundred better ways to kill a person without a wand compared to Tom's favourite _Avada Kedavra_.

The killing curse usually left a dead person with an obvious look of fear on their face, but Harry thought, _wouldn't it be better to kill a person using their bodies against them?_ Some snakes killed with venom that could coagulate blood, so couldn't he do the same? Or he could use his energy and destroy a blood vessel in someone's brain. The more he studied physiology, the more ways he could think of to discreetly kill. Of course, it was all for theoretical interest – Harry mused darkly. But then again, killing someone quietly wasn't really Tom's style. Tom's ego craved the attention – needed someone to say – _Hey, there goes the Darkest Wizard of all times! Run for your bloody lives!_

Late towards the evening, Harry found a stack of _Daily Prophets_ hidden underneath a shelf nailed on the wall beside the fireplace beneath a stack of books. The contents of the shelf itself were protected by a glass door, and Harry had tried opening it earlier in the week. It had frustrated all his attempts. At first he didn't think much about the papers that he had found, until he saw titles such as You-Know-_Who_ _Gone for Good?_ and _The Whereabouts of the Boy-Who-Lived_.

Curious, he took them to the wooden table where he ate all his meals, and he read the articles. It was full of speculation of what had happened on that night, so many years ago. He learned the name of his father, and he stumbled across the name of Albus Dumbledore – a man who the _Daily Prophet _had interviewed, and claimed that Harry was somewhere safe.

So that's probably what Richard had meant by the '_people who had put him with the _Dursleys'. Harry shook his head; _this Dumbledore character needed some looking into_.

In the margins of the paper, there were strange annotations written in some sort of green ink. The most interesting of them all was the name _Tom Marvolo Riddle. _It was very familiar. _That's the name on that gravestone..._ Harry remembered,_ but without the Marvolo._

\**4**/

"Hello Tom," Harry said nonchalantly, playing with the edges of his black robes, edged with green. They were standing in Privet Drive, on the sand of the playground nearby.

"My silver," Tom was all smiles. His tone was honey. He elegantly brushed off some invisible lint on the fabric of his immaculate black robes.

Harry mused, "So, what should we destroy today?"

"All the Muggles and Squibs," Tom grinned widely, as if his birthday or something had come early, "Let's burn this place down, silver. With the destruction of our humble beginnings, we can begin anew, and forge a new world." There was a fanatical light in his eyes, which Harry thought was one degree too close to insanity for his liking.

Harry went along with it, considering that it was only a dream, anyways.

Silver flames and green light soon adorned Privet Drive. There were shrieks of fear, as people tried to flee from the green and the silver.

But Harry spared one house.

"Burn it down!" Tom hissed in his ear.

Harry shook his head defiantly, "No." He was beginning to understand why Tom had picked this place out of all places tonight.

It was to test Tom's abilities to manipulate him.

Harry had no interest in being anyone's toy.

"You shouldn't say no to me, silver. You and I, green and silver, is all we need in this world." Tom said sweetly, as he grabbed Harry by the arm, and dragged him into the intact house, surrounded by burning carnage all around.

He saw the familiar kitchen and living room; the familiar set of wooden stairs that lead up to the hallway above. Frames hung around the house, displaying happiness. Happiness that Tom could never understand and Harry himself could barely grasp. Tom walked on ahead. Harry took seconds to glance about, looking at the pictures that she had drawn: of dinosaurs and birds, and he could hear the ghost of her laughter echo around the hallway, similar to that of her real laughter in weeks prior. Slowly, he walked on ahead, and Tom held her struggling form.

She looked hopefully at Harry.

He knew he couldn't.

Not even in a dream.

Tom hissed simply, _'Kill her.'_

Harry shrugged carelessly, "She's a witch, let her go."

'_She's got Muggle blood in her veins.'_ Tom hissed with disgust. _'She's nothing.'_

"As you do. You are just as Muggle as she is." Harry stated. "I know who you are." He gazed upon Tom's face. The boyish charm was gone. What remained was hideous; the black eyes started to resemble slits. _It was the face of the man who Tom became._ Harry observed. He felt his energy leave his fingers and suddenly they burned – TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. He let the flames meld together and the words I AM LORD VOLDEMORT flashed in the air between the two. Harry then laughed. It was mocking. "How long did it take you to come up with that? Staring at the ordinary; desperately wanting to be something extraordinary."

"You wound me, my silver." Tom said melodramatically. He then paused, and said quietly, "So it has come to this." His voice was still as smooth as cream. His dark eyes stared at Harry, his yew wand still pointed towards Hannah. "My silver..."

"You only want my magic." Harry accused, pointing at Tom. "You only want what you can't have."

"But you are mine!" Tom hissed angrily. Fury shone in his dark eyes. "You have no right to demand anything."

"Do I?" Harry said coldly. "Last time I've checked, this is my body. Yours was forfeited, the day you killed my parents. I can get rid of you."

"Can you?" Tom laughed. It was arrogant, and resembled the dark laughter in Harry's past dreams pre-Tom. "If I can't have you, silver – then you can't have yourself. We would have been great together... but I see that you've made your choice." He pointed his wand towards Harry now, and Hannah wiggled out of his grasp. "_Avada –_"

Before the last word left Tom's lips, Tom's torso suddenly caught on fire. Harry felt immense pain – it was beyond anything Uncle Vernon had ever inflicted on him, but he knew it wasn't his own. It was Tom's. He let his own flames engulf his own agonized body until there was no distinction between himself and fire.

_He was fire. _

_And Tom thought he could manipulate fire, play with it and tame it for his means. _

_He got burned in it._

* * *

It's exam season. If you see another update before the end of April, someone needs to tell me to go study – no seriously!

Hm... I still have fond memories of doing integrals back in first year.

Now if only I was motivated like Harry... All that biochemistry isn't going to study itself! ):

Review?


	5. Games of Fire (1)

**The Inbetween – **By Slytherin's Dragon

**Part II**_**(1)**_** – Games of Fire **

One bloody long chapter told from the POVs of the three H's.

* * *

/**Hannah**\

Hannah was drawing. From the tip of her finely sharpened black pencil, a pterosaur emerged on the thick sketchbook paper. She spent a lot of time trying to get the wings of her great reptile just right, but at the end of thirty minutes, she sighed and placed her pencil back into her wooden case of drawing pencils. _Wings were hard._ She had spent the day before studying the anatomy from the fossil of a pterosaur depicted from her _Big Book of Dinosaurs_, even though she knew that pterosaurs weren't dinosaurs. They were reptiles.

She turned to look at the glass sliding door that led into the backyard of 2 Privet Drive. It was a dreary day out, and Hannah was almost certain that it was going to rain. She felt glum. Ever since her father had taken Harry away, she had spent what free time she had sketching and reading the things her father had suggested for her. And she tried to avoid looking at the Dursleys' house. There were almost no words that were adequate to describe her feelings towards them and furious would be the best descriptors. _It was amazing how those people could carry on with their daily life, not even giving a hoot for their missing nephew_. But then again, from what Harry had told her, they mostly ignored him, unless if there were chores that needed to be done. _So overall, it was ordinary life as usual for the Dursleys_. She had even overheard Harry's Aunt Petunia chatting with a neighbour and telling said neighbour that Harry had gone off to some boarding school somewhere a week ago, when she had been walking back home from school. _Lies. All lies._

Then there was magic. Her father had spent the last week of August teaching her how to _Apparate_. It was incredibly frustrating process. Her father had said, _"Hannah, Hannah, you aren't determined enough to reach your destination. You hold on to the piece of ground you stand upon too dearly. You must let go, love..."_ She had been on the verge of giving up, even though her father would stubbornly refuse to let her to do so.

On the last day of that week, she had managed it despite losing some part of her eyebrow. She had recalled her experiences of flying on her _Nimbus 1700_; the freeing sensation of soaring high above ground, to be able to go wherever she liked with the slightest touch. Things had vastly improved since then, she had spent the next two days _Apparating_ everywhere: to the washroom, to her room, to the kitchen and even to a discreet location at school. She had even _Apparated_ home to use the loo. Her mother had shaken her head at her when Hannah had _Apparated_ the ten steps from the kitchen to the living room. She spent each attempt at _Apparition_ minimizing the 'popping' sound, and trying to eliminate the telltale turn, just like how her father and how Harry _Apparated_.

"_Lumos!_" Hannah summoned her wand from the long sleeve of her navy blue shirt. She reflexively looked away as the blindingly bright light shone from the tip. She put out the light and felt a shade gloomier. Her dragon-wand refused to cooperate with her. She had tried spells, charms and transfigurations from simple books that her father had purchased for her. But just like _Lumos_, she could force an outcome, but the precision was a different story. As a result, she was very cautious when it came to trying out spells. Things could easily go wrong. She put her wand down next the drawing of the pterosaur and she went to go fetch a glass of water.

She almost spilt her water when her father suddenly _Apparated_ in front of her, clad in his usual crisp white shirt and dark tie. His hair seemed more dishevelled than usual, signifying a stressful day. It was unusual for her father to _Apparate _within the house without a prior warning, considering that her mother didn't enjoy being scared out of her wits by the suddenness of it all. _Must be something urgent._

"Hullo, Hannah, I hope you aren't busy, dear." He said, just as Hannah took a draught from her glass.

Hannah shrugged, "No, father, I was just drawing..."

"Harry seems to have fallen ill. I've got an important meeting at _Nimbus_ today regarding the prototype for the _Nimbus 2000_, and..."

"On a Friday evening?" Hannah exclaimed, "Are they mad?"

Her father laughed, "_Cleansweep_'s unveiled their new broom for the next year earlier today. It's an emergency meeting of sorts. The managing people want to see if they can hurry us up on the designing aspects – time for them to crack the whip –"

"Is it any good, the new _Cleansweep_?" Hannah asked eagerly.

Her father shrugged, "The _Cleansweep Seven_ looks flashy and I don't know if they've improved the steering from the _Cleansweep Six_. You tried it out –"

"Yeah," Hannah remembered, "The _Nimbus_ is more sensitive to my touch –"

"Anyways, I was wondering if you can keep an eye on Harry while I go –"

"Of course," Hannah agreed, "But you will have to _Side-along-Apparate _me. I've tried to _Apparate _to the other place to see Harry, and I got thrown backwards. Your wards - maybe."

Her father grinned, "Harry hasn't figured it out either, love. Grab whatever you need –"

Hannah tucked her wand back in the invisibly charmed holster on her right arm, and grabbed her case and sketchbook. She grabbed onto her father's arm, and she felt the wrench of _Apparition_ before finding herself in the living room of her father's flat, standing in front of the grey and white stones of the fireplace. She noted that the flames were silver._ She had never seen silver fire._

It flickered merrily.

"Harry isn't contagious, dear, so no need to worry about the spread of germs." Her father informed upon arrival, "It's more of a magical-exhaustion type of thing. He's got a fever though... not too serious... gave him _Tylenol_ earlier... Better idea to not use something that would not deplete the rest of his magic.I will hopefully be back, soon."

"Alright," Hannah nodded. She understood that the reason why most Potions don't work on Muggles was because they lacked the magic to activate the Potion molecules. Her mom couldn't have any and it was ill-advised to give Potions to those whose magic levels were low. Her father had informed her the day she had asked why her mom couldn't have Potions. _"It is surprising how little British wizards know about this. There are certain Wizarding diseases that zap at a person's magic and these people have often died due to a Potions overdose. If you don't know what ailment you are suffering from, sometimes the best course of action is to use Muggle medicine or none at all." _Hannah knew that a magical person could die if they became totally magically exhausted, but it wasn't always true.

Her father gave her a smile and an affectionate hug. He was gone barely a second after. Hannah walked towards the bedroom, which was dimly lit by the shaded lamp standing on top of the nightstand. The curtains were shut, blocking out any residual light from the setting sun. She could make out Harry's prone figure underneath her father's blue blankets. A damp blue cloth sat on the boy's forehead. She put her art supplies down on her father's writing table and walked closer. She heard a faint hissing sound and she saw Silly behind the lamp. Harry looked pale and his cheeks were flushed slightly scarlet. She gently reached out to check on the coldness of the cloth and figured that it could need changing. When she removed the cloth, she was astonished to see a bloody residue on the part of flesh that bore Harry's scar. She rubbed the cloth against the caked blood and it flaked off easily, revealing pristine skin underneath.

_The scar was gone._

Slipping into the washroom with Silly's black eyes fixated upon her figure, she remoistened the cloth with cool water and reapplied the cloth on. She saw Harry shift a bit in his slumber. Seeing that all was fine, she went back to the writing desk and flipped open her sketchbook to a blank page. She pulled out her wand, examining the pale yew. There was a characteristic twist in the wood a third of the way from the bottom. _What did her dragon look like when it was alive?_ _And was it a boy or a girl?_ She gripped the wood, feeling the smooth surface. It seemed calmer now – the energy wasn't threatening to escape from the wood. She felt a nudge from below and she was surprised to see Silly batting her leg with his head. She reached downward and the snake used her arm as a lift of sorts to get to the top of the writing desk. The snake seemed to give her a nod of thanks.

Hannah returned her attention to her wand. Something compelled her to flip the wand upside down and she cautiously placed the tip against the next blank sheet of paper in the book. She didn't want to set her book on fire or anything like that. Her mom had always indulged her love of art and Hannah knew that a lot of the stuff she got for her artistic daughter was on the pricey side. Plus, the book was three-quarters full; she didn't want to lose a year's worth of art due to some magical dysfunction on the dragon's part. She was surprised to see that the only thing the wand had left behind on the page was a dark mark that resembled the graphite of pencil.

Inspired, she placed the wand against the creamy page again and she was frantically sketching. She didn't know what exactly she was drawing until a pair of large battered-looking wings appeared. The thin lanky torso of the dragon appeared, along with a formidable spiked head. The eyes were fierce and proud. Despite the savagery, there was nobility in the way the dragon seemed to carry itself.

_Are you female?_ Hannah wondered mentally. She almost dropped her wand when she felt a sudden jerking sensation in the piece of wood. "Male then?" She said out loud, drawing a curious look from Silly. The energy returned to its more tranquil state.

_This was crazy._ Hannah mused to herself but yet she felt a calming sensation that seemed to be emanating from the yew stick. Experimentally, she put down the wand. She felt the sensation cease. She picked it again and she felt a contented hum of energy from her wand. _Well, it couldn't hurt to try again._ She thought. _"Lumos!"_

Gentle light illuminated the tip of her wand. Hannah shook her head in disbelief, just as Silly pushed a piece of parchment in front of her with his tail. There was one word written on it: _Crazy._

Bewildered, Hannah grabbed a nearby self-inking quill and wrote back. _You can write?_

Silly seemed to ponder the written message for a long time before reaching for a battered, bite-mark covered pencil with his mouth. He wrote laboriously on the parchment. _Harry._

_Harry taught you?_ Hannah quickly followed up.

Silly nodded, and then wrote: _Battleships._

_Play?_ Hannah scribbled with her quill. The snake scrutinized her word and she watched as Silly dexterously got off the table and slithered out of the room. It kind of did make sense. _Snakes have no need for an alphabet in their language. It's not like they read and wrote – they spoke only_. Harry must have taught Silly how to write out the letters for _Battleships_ so that they could play. Letters must have led to words. And words inevitably led to simple sentences. She was amused when she realized that a lot of parchment scraps on the writing table were covered in Silly's scribbles. _They weren't really scribbles; Silly actually had better penmanship than a lot of people she knew. _

She heard the sound of something sliding against the wooden floor and she got up from her chair to help Silly bring in the old _Battleships _box. Playing with Silly was extremely amusing. Hannah found it fascinating how dexterous the snake was at handling all the tiny pieces and how quickly he wrote out his targets on a scrap of parchment with the same fang-abused pencil. When Silly had sunk all of Hannah's ships, she got up to check on Harry. _She had been so close to winning too! _Silly wriggled contentedly as he started putting away the pieces for the next new game.

Harry's cheeks were less flushed. _The Tylenol must have kicked in_. Hannah removed the cloth from his forehead. Harry suddenly blinked, forcing her to drop the damp cloth on the blanket.

"Hello, you," Hannah grinned, "Long time no see."

Harry looked at her for a few seconds before he croaked, "Water..."

Hannah fetched the cup from the nightstand. It was empty, so Hannah picked it up and started heading towards the kitchen. She stopped when she was halfway out the door. _Was she a bloody witch or not?_ She grabbed her wand from the writing desk. Pointing it towards Harry's grey cup, she tried hopefully with a slight wrist twitch, "_Aguamenti!"_ She had seen her father do it many times.

A stream of water, reminiscent of how water emerged from an opened tap, poured neatly into the cup. She was ecstatic. She wouldn't have dared to do such a spell an hour before – she might have flooded everything. _Thank you he-dragon_. She made a jerky motion with her wrist and the water flow instantly stopped. She passed the cup on to Harry, who had somehow managed to sit up. He was still swathed in the big blue blanket. He sipped.

"You got your wand to behave..." He observed. His voice was hoarse.

"Yeah, I guess so." Hannah agreed. She ran back to grab her sketchbook. "This is what the dragon once looked like, apparently. I drew it with the wand." She flipped to the most recent page. She watched as Harry removed one arm from the blanket cocoon and traced the marking with his fingers. He took his finger off and surveyed it critically, "No smudging..."

"How are you feeling and what happened?" Hannah asked curiously, diverting the topic.

"Weak." Harry said, "I don't know what happened. It was a dream. It was a series of dreams, actually." He paused; looking at Hannah's confused face. "They were a different form of fire-dream from the ones I told you about. Apparently my body was host to another being, or something. I destroyed him, but in the process it felt like I was destroying myself."

"Did it have anything to do with your scar?" Hannah found herself putting pieces together. Harry's iconic scar was gone. The one physical marker that had distinguished him as the boy-who-lived and everyone else was gone.

"Why?" Harry asked wearily.

Hannah said simply, "It's gone."

"It's gone?" Harry asked quietly. "Seriously?" He reached out to touch his forehead for the smooth unmarked skin. "It's gone." He said with relief. "He's gone."

/**Henry**\

He stood at the far end of the barn with his arms outstretched. Robed in black, bathed by the gentle glow of Crow's blue-flamed lantern and under the scrutiny of eyes of the dozen or so feathered denizens who rested on the high rafters above, he felt only a little ridiculous.

_But this is tradition..._ He mused darkly.

Something sharp suddenly dug in his right shoulder and he struggled to suppress the urge to wince. He turned around and walked the way he came, towards where all the horses of the manor were kept in large comfortable wooden stalls at the front of the barn. His dragon-leather booted feet trod on the soft earth beneath. Crow's light followed him. Crow was stablemaster; it was his duty to tend to the ravens, horses and the barn. He was old, shrivelled looking, with several old slashes that covered half of his elven face._ Wounds inflicted by a wolf when he was young_. They had barely missed his left eye. He was older than Father, and had been around since Father's Father had been a child. Even the horses fell silent as he and Crow passed them, as if they could appreciate the magnitude of this tradition.

Father stood outside, beneath the stars and cloudless sky. He was dressed in a similar set of black robes with the silver stitching of their sigil on the back. Only then did Henry turn to look at his new companion, a large black raven with plumage darker than the night sky or in proper Wizarding terms – the _Dark Messenger_. The most traditional of Western European pureblood families bred and raised these birds. Or rather, select families of house-elves did bound to those old families did. Henry had the greatest respect for Crow, his daughter, and his grandson – the three who tended to the sometimes uncooperative birds, for they each had their own complex personality. They were bred to be intelligent, to fly as swift as the wind and gifted with their own brand of magic. These ravens were used to carry messages and no one, not even the _Ministry_ had the capacity of intercepting these communications.

In his own House, only those of Winters' descent were permitted to tame one of these birds. Father had one and Uncle had one. Any child born not of the Winters' bloodline wouldn't have been capable of attracting a raven of House Winters. In the olden days; it was this nerve wrecking ceremony that detected bastardry. Henry hadn't been worried about _that_; he looked like Father – jet black hair, blue eyes, sharp cheekbones amongst other attributes. There was also the sense of humor.

"You have Scar." Crow said, in his raspy concise manner. He wasn't one to waste words. "Really, the last bird I'd expect to choose you."

Henry turned to observe the bird. It wasn't completely black, as his eyes had originally led him to believe. It possessed a single white tail feather. It merely stared disinterestedly away – at the sliver of moon, maybe.

"Why wouldn't he –"

"She... Master Henry... She..." Crow corrected sternly. There wasn't an ounce of humor in Crow. "She's a strange one. The other ravens leave her alone."

"Sounds pleasant..." Henry found his sarcasm resurfacing after it had been buried from the solemnity of tradition. Scar whipped her head around and fixed Henry with a stony stare. Her eyes seemed even darker than her feathers, if that were possible. Henry stared back, just as he heard Father say, "They understand human speech."

"I know." Henry sighed, watching as the disinterested Scar turned away to look at whatever she was looking at before. He was beginning to wonder if the bond was of a magical variety that compelled Scar to come to him, or if Scar had chosen him on her own accord. Or, maybe – it was a combination of both. For a raven that had just chosen her lifelong human companion, Scar seemed to not give a crap at all.

"Is there anything else, Master Edward?" The house-elf rasped as he looked respectfully towards Father. The evening breeze blew against the elf's plain robes of dark grey.

"That's all. Thank you, Crow." Father turned his attention to the house-elf, who immediately disappeared with a 'pop' to attend to his other duties.

Only a few trace remains of the sun's rays remained, streaking the sky orangish-purple amidst the celestial bodies, as he and Father walked back to the manor. The trees were beginning to shed their leaves; their naked branches in juxtaposition to their covered brethren. He fought the urge to jump in every crunchy pile of leaves, mainly because jumping with Scar on his shoulders probably wasn't the best idea. Squirrels played in the foliage, deer perused the waning greenery and the last bits of evening birdsong made its way through Henry's ears. _What was it like to be a squirrel – with all that freedom?_ He wondered if Mother ever played with squirrels in her _Animagi _form. He knew that he totally would.

"Your Mother's entertaining again..." Father remarked with his usual odd mix of cynicism and humor, "No doubt airing out all of my past misdeeds –"

"Who is she entertaining?" Henry kicked at a pile of leaves, causing them to flutter in the air.

"Minerva –" Father said in an odd pained sort of way.

Henry smiled slightly. "You mean my Aunt Minnie?" He watched Father nod and he asked, "Why are her visits always such a burden to you?"

"It's hard to say..." Father stopped, looking rather serious. "Your Mother and I met when we were in Hogwarts together. She was a Gryff –"

"But you said House didn't matter!" Henry exclaimed.

"It does and doesn't." Father said grimly, "Your Mother was and still is one of Minerva's favourite students. Not just student, but best friend – especially after she graduated. You have to remember that Minerva is barely a few years older than me. She did a Mastery in _Transfiguration_ with your Aunt Minnie afterwards. Minerva always thought that Arya was wasting her brilliance after marrying me; she gave up her academic life to take on the role of becoming Lady Winters... It doesn't help that I, your Father, was a rake of a Slytherin back in the day."

"But you said you were a well-behaved student!" Henry looked accusingly. "Even Mother said so!"

Father laughed. "When you have your own offspring someday, you will understand the need to appear perfect in the hopes that it will rub off on them. But, as you can see, that's worked out so well."

Henry ignored the sarcasm. He knew what Father was referring to: the pinching of pies from windowsills, playing truant when the _Teaching Masters_ were supposed to be teaching him mathematics, history and the art of behaving oneself during a party of mixed company and sneaking out with Uncle who took him to interesting places, both Muggle and Magical. Determined to take Father down with him, he then said. "At least the apple didn't fall too far from the apple tree." He knew that he wasn't the only reason food in the kitchen went missing – there was Uncle, Father and he even had an inkling that Dr. Abbott had the knack of purloining pastries whenever he came over to visit.

"You have something there, Henry." The corners of Father's lips quirked into a small smile. He then said, "I bear no animosity towards dear Aunt Minerva. The protective lioness over her cubs... I would be alarmed if my own hypothetical daughter married someone like me! Who knows, maybe you will be a Gryffindor yourself! But the hat would be mad to put you there!"

Henry sighed, "Sometimes you seem so dull sometimes – all holed up in your workroom. It's hard to reconcile to the fact that you were someone that Aunt Minnie shook her head at. And all those stories about you and –"

"People change when they grow up." Father said reflectively, cutting in before Henry could mention the word ladies. "I drove professors crazy back in the day – especially dear Minerva – although I've always suspected that your Uncle Filius has a soft spot for me during my younger days. I've always liked Charms."

"It's very hard not to like Uncle Filius." Henry grinned, "He always brings those tap-dancing cupcakes on Sundays when he and Rogan come over to play games."

"It's not all fun, son." Father looked weary. He brought a hand to his brow. "One day, the burden will fall onto you, as it has for many generations in our House. Some games are very treacherous. This is one of them."

"Mother seems worried about me too, these days." Henry observed as the two started back towards the _Winterwind_.

"These are cloudy times, Henry." Father mused, "There have been some strange things happening in the world of politics that are just coming into the light now." Father stopped again, this time to summon his wand. He incanted quietly and said, "_Muffiato_. Owls are being sabotaged, deals are going awry with nuisances like _Leprechaun gold_ and ever since the _Dark Lord_ went away, things are slowing going to pieces. It makes me wonder though..."

They had passed through the great wooden doors that led into the grand hallway that served as the entrance to Henry's humble home. Both removed their slightly muddy footwear. Father still had that strange look on his face, still thinking about whatever possibility he had been confronted with. He almost looked hesitant to speak, but he plunged forward.

"The Ministry had been particularly abysmal at handling the entire _Dark Lord_ business many years ago. Voldemort's forces were nothing compared to Grindelwald's. Hell, Grindelwald brought Wizarding Europe to its knees with his great army. He also had control of the German, French and Austrian governments. Voldemort barely conquered Britain. He never took control over the _Ministry_. Yet the _Daily Prophet_ and other government censored sources still portray that he was the 'eviler' of the two." Father finally said, "All blinking propaganda if you ask me – brainwashing the masses. A lot of books about Grindelwald's reign have mysteriously vanished from circulation in Europe, too. You won't find any legitimate ones at _Flourish_ _and Blotts_ and Richard told me there were none to be had in Munich either, nor Paris, nor Barcelona, nor Moscow... and so on and so forth."

"But why? Why would the governments deliberately do this?" Henry asked, ignoring Scar's sudden more painful dig into his shoulder.

"That's something that I'd like to know too. I don't like it at all. The so called official reason was to prevent the rising of another Grindelwald... which, between you and I, know to be full of bloody horseshit." Father said. He then cautioned. "Don't tell anyone about what I've speculated because there are some people out in this world that have worked very hard to hide the truth. Your Mother knows my suspicions and has formulated ideas of her own. Master Lupin has said that your _Occlumency_ has improved greatly within the past month. Use it at all times. It may save your life and others."

Henry nodded solemnly. He had always wanted Father to confide in him. But now, he was starting to get a grip on what Mother meant by games. And now he knew a fraction on what Father, Uncle Filius, Rogan, his godfather and everyone else discussed behind carefully warded and locked doors while they played the magical version of _Risk_ on the occasional Sunday here at the manor. The board game was actually Muggle in origin, but Uncle Filius had charmed the landscape to be pseudo-real in three dimensions, the board had been enlarged and the colourful army pieces moved while fighting with guns and cannonballs with the simplest commands. Henry found it painfully ironic. He never really knew who came and went from Father's special _Apparition Point_ and that there were never more than four people present at a time for those monthly meetings. His godfather, who Blaise and he called Dr. Abbott – their own little joke – Richard, showed up rather regularly, as did Rogan during the week. Uncle Filius showed up once every two weeks for dinner and conversation.

"But everyone said that Albus Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald." Henry suddenly remembered.

"Ah..." Father smiled. "And that's one of the things you can find in the few texts on Great Britain and Continental Europe about Grindelwald. What history textbooks remain about that _Great War_ in Britain and other places is filled with bogus information with an ending that rather glorifies the supposedly epic grand duel between Albus and Gellert. That apparently, after much digging to find the source, was the child of rumor. We only have Albus' words that it happened. And you know how gossip spreads..."

"Like _Fiendfyre_! Didn't the war end in the 1940s?" Henry found himself wishing that he had paid a little bit more attention in History. "I mean, people are still alive that remember... Grindelwald himself is alive too!"

"Grindelwald is hidden away in a little place in Nuremburg that no one can access but a select few." Father informed. They had reached the great spiral staircase that stood in the foyer connected to the hall that they had entered from. "The book eradication started some thirty years ago – Filius' estimate – and the _Great War_ was never added into European educational curriculums. And, then, right after Grindelwald, we had Voldemort! Everything about Grindelwald was conveniently swept under a rug during Voldemort's reign! But why? I have no bloody clue!"

"It seems so convoluted." Henry remarked, as the pair mounted the stairs.

Father affirmed. "It is. Now, Henry, we can discuss this later. I've got to think of a clever way to get out of Lucius' little soirée next week without looking like a cold-hearted bastard! He says it's for charity – the fucking hell it is! Now that's a true snake... even sheds his skin multiple times just to blend in with the times to save his own skin." Father then laughed at his jest before retrieving his wand again to lift the _Muffiato_. He shook his head. "Fucking aristocrat!"

Henry headed towards his room, as Father headed the other direction, clearly still ranting about one Lucius Malfoy. It was then where Scar, who had been silent for the entirety of the travel back croaked, _"Henry!"_ She stretched out her long wings. _"Henry!"_

"I am glad you know my name," Henry mused to Scar. "I mean –"

"_Smoke!"_ Scar almost screeched, buffeting her wings, _"Smoke!"_

"What smoke?" Henry asked Scar, as he carefully looked around. "There's no smoke!"

"_Smoke!"_ Scar croaked insistently.

Henry pushed the heavy door open to his room. It was large and spacious. The walls were painted neutral green and coloured autumn leaves blew magically below the white elaborate moldings that surrounded the ceiling. Several blue flamed torches illuminated the room, revealing the king-sized poster bed, the desk, the bookshelves, the dresser and a cushiony sofa-like thing next to the large windows that looked over the grounds. All the furniture was made up of the finest rosewood. He had a corkboard hanging near his bed, where he had pinned numerous pictures of him, Blaise and his family. Scar took off from Henry's shoulder and flew silently to the wooden perch that he had set up earlier. She helped herself to the water and a piece of dried meat from the dishes attached to the perch.

"_Henry! Smoke!"_

"I don't know what you are talking about, Scar!" Henry sighed. "There's no physical smoke, so I am guessing metaphorical smoke?"

"_Smoke!"_

"Now I know why Zephyr drives Father absolutely crazy sometimes." Henry shook his head as he removed the formal ceremonial robes, revealing the more casual shirt and trousers underneath as he remembered what Father had said about his own raven. He then put on a simpler dark blue robe. "Do you all talk cryptically like this?"

Scar seemed to sigh, before shaking her head.

"I am going to go find Aunt Minnie and Mother." Henry informed Scar, "I know that you understand the concept of a toilet, so please use it! Father said Zephyr used to enjoy target practice just to take the piss out of him during the first year they met!"

Scar looked highly amused by Henry's exclamation. She turned to look at Henry's pillow with a longing gaze that could possibly indicate future doom.

"Now I've done it!" Henry groaned, "I've given you ideas! I better not see crap anywhere when I get back! My _Scourgify_ is still rather rusty." Henry fingered the wand in his sleeve as he walked out, just as Scar croaked again.

"_Smoke! Henry!"_

Shaking his head, Henry navigated his way through the manor. The passageways twisted and turned, but Henry knew where most of them led to. He had spent a huge chunk of his childhood with Blaise, exploring the nooks and crannies of _Winterwind_. She always seemed to yield unexpected surprises sometimes, here and there. Father had said that the manor had been built long before _Hogwarts_ was founded and lots of secrets from the manor's past had slowly been lost.

He went to the large Kitchen where he acknowledged the three house-elves who were washing the dinner cutlery and dishes while he discreetly nabbed a pair of tarts – one apple crumble and a creamy beef-filled one – that was set to cool on a large tray on the marble surface near the oven. He tucked them both in the baggy pockets of his robes – the one main reason why he even bothered with wearing robes in the manor. _He was a growing boy – anyways!_ He snuck back into the hallways to eat the spoils before running a quick _Scourgify_ on his robe pockets and hands. He could hear the voices of Aunt Min and Mother nearby in a relatively small sitting room and he entered through the open doorway.

"Hello, Mother – Aunt Min!" Henry suddenly announced his presence to the two ladies who were sitting on the couches near a crackling blue flamed fireplace. His mother was in plain black robes, while Aunt Minnie was in a green set with her hair tied back in a severe bun.

"How did your Raven Ceremony go?" Mother asked, as he sat down on an ottoman.

"Well, I am Father's son." Henry exclaimed cheekily.

Aunt Minnie almost choked on her tea. Mother laughed. "Of course you are your Father's son! You look exactly as he did when I first laid my eyes on him back at _Hogwarts_. He was twelve."

"Same odd sense of humor, too! Although, I didn't start teaching _Transfiguration _until your father was in Third Year" Aunt Min added her two bits in, "I hope you don't become half the charmer he was. That was a very trying time in Hogwarts. It's also very difficult to discipline students when they aren't that much younger than you are, unfortunately."

"My favourite," Mother began, "Was the one about the day where Edward ran into you in the middle of the night in the Kitchens. It was when he was in Seventh Year."

"What were you doing in the Kitchens, Aunt Min?" Henry asked curiously.

"Not eating finely made German chocolate cake with ice cream, that the House-Elves set aside just for certain Professors with night cravings." Mother said teasingly, "Right, Minerva?"

Aunt Min shook her head and said with great dignity. "Of course not!"

Henry's blue eyes met Mother's brown ones and they both burst into laughter. Aunt Min's eyes also seem to twinkle with a certain kind of mirth, while she maintained the dignified lady look.

"Somehow, Edward managed to get his fingers on all the choco-err..." Mother continued, still trying to stop laughing, while the usually proper Aunt Min was beginning to look somewhat mortified that Mother had chosen to continue. "Whatever Minerva was having that night. And somehow, he got out of it without a single detention. I learned about this during a game of Truth and Dare many years afterwards. Neither Minerva nor your Father will tell me anything further than that. But I have theories!"

Henry caught the subtle mischievous look that Mother threw at Aunt Min. He had never seen prim Aunt Min flush such a shade of scarlet before. He knew that he could probably never look at Aunt Min the same way again. He wasn't daft. Father – he wasn't too surprised about – from what he had gathered, he attracted women like flies back in the day. He had remembered his godfather saying. _"Your father was a very successful ladies' man. And then he somehow convinced your mother to marry him – Arya continuously rejected him throughout Hogwarts and during her Mastery years! But then again... now that I think about it... I think Arya was always interested in Edward – she just played a very long game of hard-to-get with him. Now that's a true Slytherin... someone who can even trick the old Sorting Hat into putting them into Gryffindor!"_ He then sighed – his godfather was such a mysterious person. He had been surprised to run into his daughter, Hannah, the other day at Ivan's. He hadn't even been aware that his godfather had a daughter!

"Well, Father can be incredibly persuasive when he really wants something." Henry mused rather delicately, "And grown-ups really do still play Truth and Dare?" His question went unanswered as Aunt Min took over the conversation.

"That rascal!" Aunt Min shook her head. But Henry could see her smile slightly. "I got premature grey hairs because of him. There was always a joke in everything he did. He was worse than the Marauders in some ways – who started the year after Edward graduated. And that best friend of his – Richard – ."

"Dr. Abbott? My godfather?" Henry inquired. Aunt Min's tirades were always so hilarious!

Mother sighed. "And I really he would like it better if you called him Uncle Richard instead. You are after all, his godson."

"Blaise and I think Dr. Abbott sounds so much cooler." Henry insisted. "I remember when Father got some Muggle equipment to temporarily work in the manor and we were watching what Muggles called television shows. There was one called _Doctor Who_ that Father had on something called VCRs. Blaise and I loved that show! Muggles are so complicated, but oh – so interesting! It's bloody amazing what they could come up with without magic! Doctor sounds so much more infinitely fascinating than Uncle. Blaise and I used to come up with so many interesting storylines featuring Dr. Abbott's skills and time travelling abilities!"

"I remember. Richard isn't a Time Lord though. Just a physicist who really loves his work." Mother said as she poured another cup of tea from a teapot. Henry. "You and Blaise were mesmerized by the television." She then added, "You used to call Richard Rich when you were still in diapers!"

"Mother!" Henry sounded horrified, determined to nip this in the bud before the dam burst. Mother was all too fond of talking about his younger days.

Aunt Min let out something that sounded suspiciously like a snigger.

/**Harry**\

It took Harry long over a week to recuperate his strength after mentally destroying Tom with fire. The fire-dreams just as he had suspected earlier on, had seemed to be linked to his former scar. After its disappearance, the dreams had vanished as well. Harry had a feeling that they would never return, although he wasn't entirely certain.

The week had been pleasant though. Richard brought Hannah to visit several times and they had even gone out for a picnic at Hyde Park. _"The fresh air will do you good, Harry."_ That was Richard's prescription. He had immediately charmed a _Glamour_ for Harry to disguise his appearance. _"Despite the disappearance of your scar – you look remarkably like your father. Better safe than sorry."_

The _Glamour_ was something that Harry had found immensely interesting. He could sense the layer of magic that Richard had added that changed his appearance. It clung to him like a second skin. _"A Glamour is one of the most difficult charms a wizard can master. First, you have to work on the visual illusion. Second, there is the physical illusion – without the second... if your Glamour has long hair, a person's hand would just pass through the illusion, instantly ruining your disguise."_ It was fascinating that at the end of it, he looked like he could pass for Hannah's brother. Richard had given him brown hair, dark eyes, and a mix of his own and Hannah's facial features.

It was pleasant to be out in the sun. He had Silly with him and his silly snake spent the entire outing wrapped around Harry's neck like some sort of scaly scarf. There had been a cliché red-white checkered picnic blanket too, with things like sandwiches, wraps, lemonade and apple pie for dessert. The pie had been so good – Richard said rather cryptically that he had stolen the pie from an old friend who baked earlier in the day. He had sat, his back propped on the trunk of a tree, while Hannah and Richard were talking avidly about how pterosaurs flying theories. He didn't participate much in the conversation, but it was remarkably soothing to laze around, listen and pretend for a moment that he lived a normal life.

They had gone to the theatre afterwards and ended up watching two movies – _Home Alone_ and _The Little Mermaid_. Silly had hid under Harry's coat when they entered the theatre, to avoid being thrown out by the ticket collectors. Harry had never gone to a movie theatre before, even though he knew Dudley had seen many movies with his gang.

Today, Harry was looking at the mirror in the washroom, wondering if there was any way to change his appearance without a wand. It was getting somewhat boring being stuck inside all day. He had been reluctant to practice magic in the past days due to fatiguing easily. He looked at his hair first, observing that it had always stuck up in the same places regardless of any combing attempts. _There might be magic that's doing that_. Harry summoned the magic from his core and used it to examine the internal 'magic pathways' in his body. The extensive pathways reminded Harry of the circulatory system; the way the magic seemed to flow throughout his body, perfusing all the cells and tissues in his body.

Magic didn't seem to be tangible, like blood. It was energy but its behaviour didn't seem to fit in with any known Muggle categorization of energy. _Muggles don't know that magic exist._ He reminded himself.

He had been surprised to learn from Richard that only a few people possessed _magic sense_. He had tried to draw a diagram on how he thought the pathways were distributed in his body, but the network seemed to have properties that baffled him.

He found an unusual tangle of energy somewhere in his head, and he used his magic to tug at the tendrils. He pulled at the construction, and felt it crumble at his touch. His normally stick-everywhere-hair immediately fell limp and Harry ran a comb through it.

It stayed flat. He ran his energy through the spot where the tangle had been and imagined the strands of keratin lengthening out from their follicles. He was amused when the hair on his head did grow. It was surprisingly rather exhausting. He stopped it when his hair was shoulder length. He parted his hair to one side and he realized that the longer hair really did make a huge impact to his appearance. Richard had transfigured the frames of his glasses into something a little more square. _"The Potters were rather famous for their circular spectacles. But still, I know of an oculist that could probably fix your sight problems. I will take you to see her one of these days."_ Harry had an odd feeling that old Wizarding families liked to keep their old traditions – Tom had been so determined to hold onto Slytherin's ideology and he had little doubt that his own father was proud of his own messy hair and spectacles. The hallmarks of being a Potter.

Somewhat contented with his transformations, Harry went and fetched the black trench coat that Richard had bought for him sometime in the previous week in anticipation of colder weather. He also grabbed several pounds that Richard had left in a bowl on the dining table, near the chessboard. _"Just in case."_ Richard had winked at him before putting the fistful of bills and coins in the bowl. It was as if Richard was giving him encouragement to learn how to be self-sufficient.

Harry shook his head at the chess set. He knew he was going to lose this round again. Richard was too damned good. But at least he was lasting longer.

'_Going out, Silly-boy?'_ Silly slithered from the stony surface of the area in front of the fireplace. _'Take me! Take me!'_ Harry extended one arm towards the ground and Silly climbed on. The snake made himself comfortable underneath the warm fabric of Harry's' new coat.

Harry took the ring of keys that hung on the wooden coat stand near the front door. He unlocked the door – something that he had never done during these weeks in the flat – and stepped out. He locked the door and was surprised to see the door morph out of view when he walked a few steps away. Curiously, he walked back, and the door appeared again. _Magic was so strange._

He took the lift to the first floor, observing the other inhabitants of the building with discreet interest. There were people carrying their groceries and people with screaming children that were too young for school. It seemed so ordinary. No one seemed to be aware of the magical apartment that existed on the seventh floor. When he exited the building, he found himself out on the streets. He wasn't sure where he was exactly, but his side of the street had several other buildings that resembled the apartment that he had just left. There was a big park on the other side of the street. He wandered around – there were little shops, family-owned restaurants and a bakery. He went into a Fish & Chips store nearby and had some well-battered haddock with chips. It was a little too oily for his liking, but the taste of freedom was undeniably delicious.

Silly spent the time taking a snooze. Harry found it somewhat annoying that he couldn't talk to his snake in public. Parselmouths were feared amongst European wizards. He knew that from his extensive reading.

On a whim, Harry walked into a quaint little toy shop and he emerged, his arms wrapped around a brightly coloured plastic triangular kite. There was the head of a Chinese dragon imprinted on it, with comically large eyes, whiskers and an inane grin. He patiently fitted the wooden stick that lent the little kite structure as he walked towards the park. Upon finding a large hill, he slowly made his way up. Grabbing the wooden stick in his left hand, he ran down the green grass covered with the debris of autumn, launching the kite up in the air somewhere along his rush downhill. The kite soared, its brightly coloured tail fluttering at the mercy of the winds high above.

He was surprised when he saw Richard suddenly _Apparate_ near him.

"Enjoying yourself – I see." Richard looked wistfully at the kite flying high in the sky. "Flying is always an enthralling experience for me."

"Is it?" Harry asked. He wandered what it was like to fly. "I've never flown before. And how did you know I was here?"

"It's one of the best feelings in the world. I've flown planes, helicopters, brooms and even as a bird." Richard said avidly. He then explained. "I saw the key missing on the rack, and I figured you went to go take a walk nearby. It's not hard once you take some time to rationalize things out."

"You know how to fly a plane?" Harry was surprised.

Richard grinned boyishly, "I have a pilot's license and everything. Anything that can lift humanity up in the air intrigues me, Harry. I've yet gone to space, but maybe I can one day."

Harry observed, "You don't usually show up around this time..."

"I have the day off work today." Richard said, "I want to take you to _Diagon _today. Rogan's also got the day off, so there's some things that need to be settled."

"Who's Rogan?"

"A very interesting character... you'll see. Grab my arm there, Harry."

Harry landed his kite and Richard took the toy from him. He shrunk it with his wand and Harry tucked the toy in his coat pocket.

One _Apparition _later, Harry and Richard were standing on the pavement of a semi-busy street. Harry knew that they weren't in Muggle London anymore but probably _Diagon Alley_, judging by the animated posters and people dressed in an odd assortment of robes, hats and even mismatched Mugglewear.

"This is the oculist's place?" Harry looked up at the sign in front of a store.

Richard nodded. "Yes – she's the best in Britain."

The oculist turned out to be a middle-aged woman dressed surprisingly in a white Muggle labcoat. Harry shed off his trench coat and Silly obligingly slithered onto Richard's arm. He had to wait a few moments while the oculist dealt with another patient. She then took Harry into her office and examined his eyes with several very complicated looking devices, jotting down notes and using her wand to produce enlarged three dimensional projections of Harry's eyeballs with the help of another complex machine.

"A simple problem." She finally diagnosed. "Myopia – it's when your –"

"Light rays converge before the fovea." Harry finished.

She smiled. "You are a bright boy, aren't you? Fortunately for you, a simple spell can correct your problem. Take off your glasses. You can keep your eyes shut."

Harry obliged and the oculist pointed her long wand towards his eyes and murmured a rather complex incantation. There was a strange itchy sensation in his right eye, but it soon stopped when the she pointed her wand at his left eye. She repeated the same procedure.

"Done," She said. "Open your eyes and read me that chart from where you are sitting."

Harry opened his eyes. He was amazed at the clarity he saw everything in the room. He turned his attention to the poster at the far end of the room and began to read the mixture of letters and numbers. The oculist stopped him after many lines down.

"Thank you." Harry gave the oculist a small grin.

"It's my job." She smiled back. "Now, go back to your father."

Harry didn't even bother correcting her on the way out. He retrieved his coat and Silly while Richard dealt with the administrative stuff at the receptionist's desk. He put his old glasses in his coat pocket.

"Sight any better?" Richard asked on the way out.

Harry nodded, "Definitely. I don't need those glasses anymore. She said it was just a case of nearsightedness."

"That's good. Nice job on the hair, by the way." Richard gently grabbed Harry's arm and they _Apparated _again before Harry could process Richard's compliment.

Harry found himself outside an enormous white stoned pillared building with golden detailing and the words _Gringotts_ adorned in large gold letters. People were coming and going from the building in strange robes. There were even Goblins too, dressed mostly in formal Muggle shirts, trousers and ties.

"Do you know where we are?" Richard asked curiously.

Harry replied. "_Gringotts_ – isn't it the bank – run by Goblins?"

"Yes. But this is also the home of the Goblins. Many people don't realize that. But it is something to keep in mind. Goblins always preferred the underground. Come with me."

Harry followed Richard towards the back of the building. He mused that he and Richard were one of the few individuals who were wearing Muggle attire properly after seeing several wizards wearing some form of grotesque dress walk by. They were even more appalling than Aunt Marge's old-fashioned dresses.

They passed by several large white stone pillars and entered through a set of double-doors that were much smaller than the grand ones at the front. There were more Goblins on this side of the building. Some of them wore brightly coloured robes in lieu of wearing Muggle attire. Harry was surprised to see several series of railroad tracks on the stone floors of the building. There were carts, Goblins getting onto said carts and carts accelerating down into a dimly lit abyss near one stone wall. There were also carts coming back from the darker reaches beyond with their cargo of Goblins.

Harry noticed that he and Richard were the only humans present.

A particular short and fat specimen of Goblin who was one of several Goblins monitoring the carts asked curtly. "Business, sir?" Each of the monitors wore a set of matte black robes with the word _'Watcher'_ emblazoned on their backs.

"Seeing an old friend – Rogan Merryweather." Richard then proceeded to speak rapidly in a harsh tongue that Harry could not understand. The Goblin seemed to lose his indifference and a much warmer expression appeared on his face. He even laughed at something that Richard had said. At the end, Richard jumped into a cart and helped a bemused Harry into it. Before Harry could ask anything, the cart started to move and accelerate towards the hole in the ground.

He felt Silly coil up a little tighter around his neck.

The sudden drop caused Harry's stomach to flip upside down, but he tried to keep his eyes roaming around, looking at the series of stone torches that illuminated the tunnel. There were also enormous banners that hung from the tops of the tunnels. There were three types – a banner of light and dark green, a banner with blue and gold and a banner of black and silver. There were sigils drawn on each of them, but the cart was speeding down the tracks way too quickly for Harry to make them out.

The cart suddenly decelerated and stopped at a platform, hewn from grey rock. Ornate columns and arches rose stories high to meet the ceiling. It was quite possibly one of the biggest rooms Harry had been in. It took Harry a few moments to realize that the place was illuminated by sunlight from above, streaming through glass that served as the roof for the cart platform. Statues of Goblins and mythical creatures abounded alongside strange runes carved into the walls of the place.

"Richard – you old bastard – I thought you weren't going to come!"

Harry whipped his head around to see a Goblin that was around his height look up at Richard, who had already gotten out from the cart. The Goblin was dressed rather similarly to Richard, and his long whitish blond hair was neatly braided behind him with a green ribbon that matched his tie. He had a jovial air.

"When have I let you down before, Rogan?" Richard feigned a hurt expression. "We better hurry. I am already running a bit late."

"And this is the boy?" Rogan turned to look at Harry with his big brown eyes. "Interesting. I've met your father once before. But we should talk later. Come!"

For his short stature, Rogan was able to walk extremely briskly. Harry and Richard both had to walk quickly to catch up to the Goblin, who was also keeping up a very fast-paced conversation with Richard.

"I finally beat that old dog at chess." Rogan was saying to Richard. "It was about time – you know."

"Did you really?" Richard said with great amusement, "I beat him on my third try! And that was back in my _Hogwarts _days."

"Rub the salt into the bloody wounds then!" Rogan huffed, "I've been trying for over a decade!"

As the two clearly old friends were bantering about inconsequential items, Harry found himself admiring the beautifully hewn hallways that seemed to serve as a large hub of activity. Everything seemed to be made up of stone. There were even trees, shrubs and other vegetation sculptures that looked so real that Harry was almost sure that they were once living things turned to stone. Silly peered out from under Harry's coat, eager to look at everything as well. His tongue flickered rapidly, trying to make sense of the new exciting scents.

Goblins ate, drank, argued in their harsh language, played board games and read books on the stone chairs and tables that were readily available in the halls. There were stalls set up, where vendors sold things from food items such as freshly grilled skewed meat to raw cloth to art. Goblin children frolicked and chased each other around a large fountain surrounded by interesting rock formations. The children even treated the large rock structures as some sort of a jungle gym, clambering on top of them with whoops and hollers of joy. The three coloured banners that Harry had seen earlier on the way down were also present, hanging on the walls, the ceilings and even as patterns for some of the stalls.

"What's the significance of those banners?" Harry nudged Richard after they had passed the loud chaotic area. He was beginning to feel a little hungry after smelling all of those exotic aromas.

It was Rogan who answered, "The three main branches of European Goblins; the Merryweathers, the Reinhardts and the Faurés. Of course, these family names are merely close resemblances of what they actually are in _Gobbledegook_. Each family has a rich history. The Faurés are known for their ability to forge and create works of beauty – such as in the form of swords or music. They were also the family that had figured out how to make wands work for Goblins before the Wizarding governments prohibited Goblins from using wands many centuries ago. The Reinhardts were the fierce warriors who are rather renowned for their prowess in the wars between Wizards and Goblins in the past. There are even legends that they took on dragons and all sorts of other beasts that terrorized Goblin havens. They are masters at strategy and love puzzles. In times of peace, they are most well known for their juicy mushrooms, their livestock and their beer. And the Merryweathers – my clan – have been traditionally the brains. The majority of the Gringotts Goblins are Merryweathers; we navigate the world of Muggle and Magical economics... And, here we are – my humble abode!"

They had stopped in front of a small house carved in the rock that made up the passage wall. Rectangular glass windows looked out into the artery of the Goblin world. Rogan pulled out an enormous ring of keys from one of his pockets, spent several seconds looking for an appropriate key and used the key to unlock the door.

Harry was completely caught off guard when another blur suddenly tackled Rogan and picked him up like a child. He was even more surprised to see that the blur was a human. An extremely attractive woman around her twenties with wavy blonde hair, in a set of green robes with a sword and scabbard slung across her back stuck her tongue out at her captive. Her brown eyes twinkled with mirth. She was slightly shorter than Richard, which made her a lot taller than Harry.

"Lorelei! Put me down this instant!" Rogan spluttered with what dignity he had left, "And why are you here?"

"A niece can't visit her uncle on an off-day?" Lorelei said innocently. She spoke like someone from Northeastern America. "What has this world come to?"

"Go bug your Father! I've got things to do. Gods know how Hurst puts up with you fiends!"

Lorelei finally noticed Richard and Harry standing outside. She put down her Uncle before beckoning them in. "Uncle Richard, long time no see! And who is this gentleman?"

"He's Harry, Lorelei –" Richard said rather bemusedly.

"Nice to meet you, Harry," Lorelei smiled, "I am Lorelei, Hurst's daughter, and this old man's niece! He's all bark and no bite."

Rogan muttered something intelligible in _Gobbledegook_. Lorelei continued smiling, ignoring her uncle.

"You aren't going to pick me up and swing me around like Rogan?" Richard asked humorously, "If that's the new trend in greeting uncles."

Lorelei turned to look at Richard rather critically, "You are too damned tall!"

Rogan laughed. "A shortfall of being Goblin-born – we can easily get carried off by overgrown humans."

"Have you seen Leander anywhere? We are supposed to go see Master Ilyan's newly made sword today. I heard it was the best thing's he's ever forged!"

While Lorelei and Rogan were talking, Richard pulled Harry deeper into Rogan's dwelling.

"Who is Hurst? And why does he have a human daughter?" Harry asked Richard, "And who is Leander?"

Richard removed his own coat and draped it on a stone couch covered with rich brown furs. Harry did likewise, and Silly slithered away from Harry's neck, presumably to explore the rest of the spacious living space.

"Hurst's the Head of _Gringotts_. He's also the Speaker in House of Goblins, where laws and policies are made. He adopted Lorelei when she was a baby. She had a very Goblin childhood." Richard sat down on a stone chair covered with some sort of soft hide as Harry sprawled out comfortably on the stone couch. The fur was incredibly soft and Harry found it hard to stop playing with the material with his hands. "Leander is the current heir of the Reinhardt family. He and Lorelei grew up together in these tunnels. They are best friends."

Richard summoned his wand and incanted, _"Muffiato!"_ He put his wand away and warned "Don't mention your surname or heritage to anyone – human or goblin – today. Perhaps it is best if you never do. The political situation of our world has crumbled greatly since the night you went missing. Your public re-emergence will throw internal workings in Britain and maybe the entire continent of Europe completely out of whack. There are many theories as to why your parents were killed that night and some have very serious implications."

"What kinds of implications?" Harry asked, "From what I know from the _Daily Prophet_, my parents worked for Albus Dumbledore's Order – working to take down Voldemort. So, from that – I deduce that Voldemort killed my parents because they posed a threat –"

"That's the official _Ministry _story." Richard agreed, "But there is more. Do you know how you ended up in Aunt Petunia's home?"

"It had to do something with Dumbledore, doesn't it?" Harry searched in his brain for stuff read in the _Daily Prophet_. "He said that I was safe. So I assume he had something to do with it?"

"It's very interesting." Richard finally said. "The night you were born, there was a period of time where every source of fire in Godric's Hollow was snuffed out for a good five minutes. Any attempts to relight the sources – be they torches, fireplaces, whatever – failed. The flames spontaneously reappeared afterwards. Your parents didn't realize the implications behind it and failed to correlate the event with your birth. But others in Godric's Hollow did. It's also then, very curious that a 'prophecy of sorts' pops up out of the middle of nowhere pronouncing that some newborn child would have some power to destroy Lord Voldemort."

"Prophecies? They exist?" Harry almost spat out.

It seemed so ludicrous.

Richard suddenly grinned. He laughed too. "Prophecies, smrophecies – I always thought there was no real sustenance behind a prophecy. There is something that Muggles call a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'; it is a phenomenon that occurs where the belief in the predicted future directly or indirectly causes that prophesized happening to become true. Voldemort believed it, your parents believed it and lo and behold – Voldemort marks a boy with a scar and the parents of the boy are dead! It's an interesting study into human nature –"

"So wait..." Harry interrupted, "You are saying that the prophecy was made up to precipitate certain events to happen?"

"It's a possibility, Harry." Richard said cautiously, "The prophecy itself could be very real, although my rational mind rejects the possibility. I mean, there have been a lot of prophecies that have been recorded in the past and many of them have gone unfulfilled."

"Could Dumbledore have been involved in making the prophecy?"

"Don't be so hasty to judge, Harry. Everything we've discussed is pure conjecture based on minimal empirical evidence – thought experiments, essentially. There could have been many agents involved in the fabrication of a fake –"

Their discussion was interrupted when Rogan poked Richard in the side with a long finger. "Pardon me Richard, but didn't you say we had a lot to do today –" Richard flicked his wrist and summoned his wand. He lifted whatever secrecy spell he had just utilized.

"I believe I did. I think we better deal with Harry's financial stuff first –" Richard said.

"What financial stuff?" Harry got off from his stone chair in Rogan's living room. The polished stone walls were covered with woven tapestries and furs. The floor was covered in intricately woven carpets with tassels. Rogan even had a few potted plants and a fish tank with several tiny turtles distributed in the space. They exited the living space, and walked through a hallway, leading to a set of stairs.

"We figured that you might want some access to your money." Rogan said amusedly. "Gold – it is fascinating that this commodity holds so much power over humans and Goblins. The blood of society."

"I have money?" Harry mused to himself as they climbed up several flights of stairs up. The stairs were made up of the same stone as the walls and seemed to stretch on forever. Richard and Rogan navigated the last flight with the same exuberance they had at the beginning, while Harry found himself out of breath.

"I climb these damned things every day." Rogan mused. "One of the perks of being _Vault Manager_ – I get this nice hole in the wall that is directly connected to my office at _Gringotts_. Even Hurst doesn't have such a luxury. He has to go through the hubbub of the morning rush to the surface, like everyone else. He complains about having to ride the carts to work all the time! But then, again – my office is many stories underground."

There was a large comfortable room at the top with stone shelves filled with book and stone boxes wrapped in decorative fabrics containing hundreds of scrolls. A chandelier hung on the ceiling and a white box sat in the corner. A simple wooden table, the first table made up of such material that Harry had seen underground, with a plushy leather chair sat at the centre of the room on top of a large square carpet with animal motifs.

"Is that a fridge?" Harry asked curiously. It looked so out of place.

Rogan grinned, "I keep a stash of alcohol and food up here. This is my library of sorts. It would be nice if I had a fireplace here, but chimneys are rather hard to incorporate down here. I've also got an _Apparition Point_ set up in my office. Not by me, obviously – Richard did it, but I do have control over who comes in and out. It's usually closed, anyways... or people like Richard will pester me all day!"

Richard had opened the fridge and pulled out three bottles of _Butterbeer_. He threw a pair at Rogan, who caught them both. He handed one to Harry.

Rogan looked slightly disappointed.

"No alcohol yet; you old drunkard – we haven't done anything yet!" Richard reprimanded.

"What is _Butterbeer?_" Harry mused, looking at the bottle in his hand.

"Tastes somewhat like butterscotch... contrary to its name, got no alcohol content in it at all." Richard opened his and took a draught.

Harry popped his bottle open as he watched Rogan remove a certain series of books from the bookshelf and watched as the bookshelf swung open, revealing another tastefully furnished room. He sipped his _Butterbeer_.

"_Gringotts!_" Rogan stepped past the bookshelf. "My home," He said after skipping nimbly back to his library. "Now, onto business!" Rogan walked towards a darkly varnished table and sat down on a leather swivel chair that was larger than he was. Harry and Richard crossed into the office. Richard gently stroked the stone wall behind the bookshelf that had swung open and the door slammed shut behind them. They both took the wooden chairs across from Rogan.

"If you don't mind –" Richard summoned his wand in his hand.

"Of course not." Rogan nodded towards Richard. "These days you'd be foolish not to take precautions. I am surprised that you even trust me with this!"

"Edward, you and I have had many adventures together in the past." Richard said solemnly. "But in light of what has happened at Godric's Hollow eight years back – it is a warning that not even best friends can be totally depended on. _Muffiato!_"

"I wholly concur. But we toil together, regardless." Rogan nodded with equal gravity. He turned his attention to Harry. "Now onto business – you are Harry James Potter, the son of James and Lily Potter."

Harry nodded, "I am."

"Prick your finger with this knife. Drop the blood on to this sheet. It's a confirmatory test that confirms biological and magical ancestry."

Harry took the silver knife. It had a keen edge that cut through Harry's skin with the simplest touch. He smeared his blood on the paper. It instantly burst into silver flames. When the flames died, several silvery runes remained on the surface charred paper.

"You are definitely Harry Potter..." Rogan said after looking at the sheet. "You do have a guardian – one Sirius Black – wrongly accused of betraying your parents and sent to Azkaban. He escaped and is currently living with someone named Forest Malfoy in London. He has executed the contents of the wills of your parents. This is an estimated sum of the gold I believe still remains in the Potters' vault." Rogan wrote down several series of numbers with a eagle-feathered quill and Harry gawped when Rogan pushed the parchment towards him. _He was rolling in money!_

It was almost unfathomable. How he, who once had nothing, was fabulously wealthy!

"You are entitled to an allowance of a thousand golden Galleons per month until you come of age. Everything then will be completely under your control." Rogan explained further. "It's approximately five thousand pounds according to the exchange today. Use them wisely."

"So, how am I going to get access to my vault without people knowing that I am Harry Potter?" Harry asked curiously.

"That's where I come in." Rogan smiled. "I am going to set you up with another vault – under a pseudonym of your choosing. I will also provide you with the documents – such as passports, birth certificates and so on and so forth so no one will figure out exactly who you are. Ministry records are easy to manipulate. Every month, I will transfer a thousand Galleons to this vault and you – under your alias – can have access. So, what should be your new name?"

"I would like to keep my first name." Harry said. "It's going to be odd having people calling me by some new name."

"Fair enough – Harry is a rather popular name after all." Rogan said. "Surname?"

Harry found himself mulling over possible common surnames. Dursley was definitely out. Black was probably out as well, especially if his guardian was on the run from the _Ministry_. He made himself a mental note to ask Richard about this guardian of his. It sounded like Sirius Black had just as many problems as Harry had, if not more. Picking any of the big Wizarding names that he had read about in the _Prophet_ was just simply asking for trouble – he surmised. He looked at Richard and sighed. He couldn't take Richard's surname either, as much as he wanted to; it could raise suspicions and put Richard and his family in trouble. He would have to come up with something unrelated with the Wizarding world. Preferably something plain, yet interesting at the same time – something he could stand to be called for the rest of his life.

He was a fire mage. Someone that people apparently cared enough about to set up the murder of his parents in an attempt to take control of his destiny. Maybe a name to remind him that he had his own strength to make the most of his life; a name that signified that he was strong enough to shape his own fate.

_Something that meant strong. _

"I am Stark." Harry finally said. "Harry Stark."

Richard looked amused by Harry's final decision. "Maybe you ought to make yourself an iron suit to go with that."

Harry looked completely baffled, but Rogan guffawed. "Ironman reference!"

"Famous comic book character – "

"Tony Stark – Genius, billionaire, playboy... philanthropist." Rogan interjected, sticking up a long pale finger for each attribute listed. "It's all bloody Richard's fault why we Goblins are familiar with Muggle comic book characters. For Lorelei's birthday when she was ten perhaps... Richard gave her a boxful of comic books. She and Leander shared them around with the other children and they became very popular. Goblin vendors even sell Muggle comics down here now."

"I've never read any comics..." Harry sighed. He had spent all his time reading factual books. "But Stark is a relatively common name and it means strong."

"It's a fine last name, Harry." Richard said reassuringly.

"A noble one." Rogan added. "Well, here's the key to your new vault. You can access your vault from the surface at the front of the building. Just present your name and the key. I take it you don't have a wand?"

Harry shook his head.

Rogan jotted something down on a form, "It's alright... I will just make a note of that on your file for now. The only drawback is that if you lose your key, you don't have additional verification to enter your vault. But then again, Richard knows where to find me."

"I won't lose it." Harry picked up the silver key that Rogan had slid over to him. It was remarkably simple looking for a magical key.

"I will have the other documentations done later." Rogan said. "I will pass them on to Richard. The money will be transferred over to you tomorrow."

"It's getting damned late." Richard looked at the large clock that hung on the stone wall behind Rogan. "We won't have time to –"

"Why don't we have Harry stay at my place for a week?" Rogan suggested. "Lorelei and her buddies can show him around. I am sure he's getting bored of your old hidey-hole, Richard."

"Well, I wouldn't really want to impose –" Richard said.

"Nonsense – it would be nice to have someone as young and serious as Harry around. Leander and Lorelei for all their years of education and training are the same young imps they were ten years ago. I worry for them sometimes." Rogan said sadly. "Lord Eisenheim Reinhardt isn't in the best of health and the whole family is afraid that Leander would have to take up his father's place prematurely."

"Alright then, have it your way Rogan. I don't think Harry came prepared to stay a week." Richard sighed reluctantly.

"_Diagon Alley _is right up there. Anything he needs, we can buy it up there or down here."

"Fine, fine!" Richard folded. "I will bring Hannah over the weekend too. She should learn a bit of Goblin culture before she goes off to _Hogwarts_. And I am sure it would be no big deal to coax Edward letting me bring my godson along. They ought to meet."

"You will have to get past Arya. She's the true Lord Winters." Rogan laughed.

"Oh, I can deal with Arya." Richard grinned.

Rogan said seriously. "You are a braver soul than I am, Richard."

Both men then laughed and got up from their chairs. Harry followed them and Rogan reopened the secret entrance by putting his palm over the stone.

_Well, this week is certainly going to be interesting._ Harry mused to himself as he crossed the entrance into Rogan's reading space.

* * *

Stark is one of my favourite last names! I picked it for Harry after looking through page after page of last names that really didn't do much for me. And it does mean 'strong and/or brave' depending on where you get your definitions! Long live Lord Harry Potter-Stark!

Eddard Stark was one of my favourite characters in GoT... I felt like someone stabbed me when he uh... I am almost done reading Clash of Kings. Bloody fucking Joffrey!

Hopefully I won't be killing too many characters off in this story. :P But I will say right now that there are going to be very involved power struggles and people are going to get hurt.

Review?


	6. GoF (2)

**The Inbetween – **By Slytherin's Dragon

* * *

**Part II**_**(2)**_** – Games of Fire**

/**Harry**\

The next morning, the smells of grilled meat and exotic spices woke Harry up. Habitually, he reached for his glasses, only to touch cold stone. _Right, I don't need those anymore._ He was splayed out on several layers of soft dark fur – it turned out that Goblins didn't sleep on beds – his head resting on a comfortable green pillow. His torso and legs were swathed in a thick patchwork quilt of dark and light green.

They were the colours of Merrywinter.

Reluctantly, he rolled out of the quilt and furs. He felt around for his pair of socks. He was still dressed in the same long sleeved black shirt and dark jeans from yesterday. The room was pitch-black. He spread out his energy from the palms of his hands, washing the various surfaces of the room with his magic. He could 'see' the wardrobe, the metallic box of scrolls and the writing desk that sat in the side of the room. It was a little skill that he had picked up a few days back on the way to the loo in the middle of the night. He didn't exactly understand how exactly the skill worked but he theorized that it was a variant on echolocation.

'_It's cold, Silly-boy!'_ Silly's hissing came from the bunched up quilt.

'_I know. It's rather chilly down here.' _Harry agreed, rather wishing that he hadn't left his coat downstairs. He shivered.

'_But the hunting's good. Nice fat silly mice...'_ Silly slithered out slowly, reluctant to expose his body to the hard cold stone. Harry picked up Silly and the snake wrapped himself snugly around Harry's shoulders.

The door to Harry's room swung open and Harry blinked rapidly at the sudden brightness from outside the room. Lorelei, with her long blonde hair in a simple ponytail, said. "Oh, good... you're up! You better get down there before all the food is gone. Leander can be so inconsiderate sometimes."

She dashed nimbly away, as Harry made his way towards the washroom. Rogan had provided him with the necessities, including a plastic toothbrush. As he did the basics, he found it interesting that so much Muggle-inspired stuff had found its way down in Goblin-land. Rogan even owned a magically-powered TV, although he used it for watching VCRs, since Muggle signals from above weren't very well received.

When he was done, he went down the three flights of stone steps that were covered in green carpet. They led to another hallway. Hangings, tapestries and paintings adorned the walls with the occasional gap of stone for a bracket to hold an ever-burning torch. The well-woven tapestries depicted images of fighting Goblins in magnificent armour, sailing Goblins in creaky looking wooden tubs and even Goblins forging weapons with fire supplied obligingly by a dark dragon with gleaming golden eyes. The squiggly Runes of _Gobbledegook_ were stitched beside the pictures. Harry had no doubt that they gave a brief insight into Goblin history and culture.

_If only he could read it_.

The likeness of one human was stitched onto one of the tapestries. He was tall, rugged-looking with piercing blue eyes and dark hair. Silver goblin-wrought armoured plates were worn over the dark blue robes that the man donned. There was a cheery looking Goblin piggy-back riding on his shoulders dressed in the colours of Merryweather. The man wielded a fearsome sword. The blade looked translucent and it stuck out towards Harry menacingly.

He reached out to trace the outline of the blade.

The art was so realistic, that Harry pondered whether magic was involved in the weaving or was it pure skill. And he wondered who exactly that man with the Goblin around his neck was. This was the first tapestry that he had seen down below that seemed to shed a positive light on goblin and human relationships instead of the two species attempting to hack each other to bits via physical force or magic.

He followed the sounds of conversation, to find himself in a spacious kitchen space. There were three sitting around the squat round marble table that served as the breakfast-table of sorts. Lorelei looked rather out of place; she was too tall for the table. She sat in between the two Goblins. Rogan was sitting with a spread of newspapers in front of him – _The Daily Prophet_,_ The New York Times_, several London newspapers, and some other newspapers written in foreign languages.

Harry pulled out one of the stone stools that were underneath the table. Silly readjusted his hold around Harry's shoulders and repeatedly sampled the exotic aromas of food with his sensitive tongue.

"Morning, Harry." Rogan took a sip from a mug. "Hope you slept well. It's a little different to be sleeping in a Goblin dwelling..."

"It was quite snug." Harry moved his right hand towards a pile of skewers lying in a metal tray at the centre of the table. He picked one up. Some sort of grilled meat, strange mushrooms, peppers and something that resembled sliced potato were the contents on the stick.

"This is Leander." Lorelei nudged the other Goblin, who was busy with vigorous chewing.

Leander had a skewer in both hands and alternated large bites between the two. He was dressed in a combination of white shirt, matte gold tie and black robes. His golden hair was long and in a braid. His severe dark eyes were fixated on his skewers – evidently a Goblin who took his food seriously. A dark sword-hilt protruded from his left shoulder.

The Goblin then dropped a finished stick and suddenly pushed a filled mug of golden liquid towards Harry. He swallowed before explaining. "Some apple cider my mother made me to bring over. Made from some special strain of apple that our family has managed to cultivate down here... goes down perfectly with this beef."

Harry took a bite of his skewer, savouring the interesting blend of spices that covered the juicy, tender meat. He then took a sip of the cider which had a refreshingly cool taste and the perfect amount of sweetness that seemed to compliment the tang of the spices.

"Good, isn't it?" Leander smiled knowingly.

Harry simply nodded and tackled the food. Leander and Lorelei started talking about food and Harry learned that Goblins preferred skewered foods for the purposes of convenience. Soups were also common as well as a certain kind of flatbread. Beef and lamb were the dominant meats consumed down below. Root veggies such as tubers were popular as well. Fruits were considered a luxury.

Rogan took a final sip of his mug and got up, taking all the papers with him. He tugged at his shirt to straighten it out with his free hand. "Well children, I've got to go to work now. Don't you two lead Harry astray!"

"Of course not," Lorelei grinned widely as Leander muttered rebelliously as he wiped at his strong stubbled chin with his free hand, "I am not a child!"

When Rogan left, Lorelei summoned her long dark wand from the green sleeves of her robes. She non-verbally _vanished_ the debris of breakfast, picked up the mugs and tray, and washed them in the sink with complex swishes.

"Show-off," Leander teased. He then sighed, looking rather wistfully at Lorelei's stick. "If only Goblins could have wands... Damned treaty..."

"It's alright Leander, if you need anything done – I can do it for you." Lorelei manually put the mugs and tray away in the various metallic drawers.

"It's not the same." Leander said. He then added mischievously. "But it is nice having you at my beck and call."

Lorelei swished her head defiantly. "You wish."

"You offered." Leander grinned. "Admit it. You are my bitch!"

She stuck out her tongue. "In your dreams, Leander Brandon Reinhardt!"

"This is a nice dream, don't you think?"

Harry watched as Lorelei shook her head and mutter, "Bloody impossible. That's what you are."

"Just how much magic does a Goblin have?" Harry asked, putting a halt to the banter.

Leander turned his head to Harry. "Well..."

"Probably as much as a wizard or a witch without a wand," Lorelei said after a moment of thought, "The wand amplifies and focuses your magic."

"This is the extent of my amazing powers!" Leander roared aloud. He put his hand forcefully in front of Rogan's mug, which Lorelei hadn't put away and pushed the mug a decimeter away from where it stood originally. He then said rather meekly. "Bloody exhausting, I would rather pick up the mug and move it."

Harry mused. "Well, if you have control over your magic like that – there are a lot of things you could do that don't require –"

"I know." Leander nodded. "I can do more than some other Goblins..." He then changed the topic, "Lorelei, m'dear, where are we going to frolic today?"

"We, my dear Leander..." Lorelei rolled her eyes at the Goblin, "Are going to raid Harry's galleons and take him shopping. I was planning to take him on a little tour of Goblin-land – maybe on Friday? You don't have anything pressing on Friday, do you?"

"Not that I am aware of." Leander said jovially. He then frowned. "There is a Family get-together tomorrow in regards to the upcoming Meeting in good old Deutschland and you know... I have to attend –"

"Father has to go too – being the Speaker and everything. I don't think I will be going this time." Lorelei sighed. "It's a shame Leander, remember when we were young, we used to pretend that the most exciting things happened during those meetings?"

"I dread them. At first they were as boring as hell – and then..." Leander trailed off, looking rather miserable. "Things... things just aren't good."

There was silence as the two friends looked solemnly at each other. For their mid-twenties, both looked very weary. Lorelei finally turned to look at Harry and she said. "We won't burden you with our little troubles, Harry. Today should be a fun day, right Leander?" She forced a smile.

"Yeah..." Leander used his fingers to push up the corners of his mouth to form a smile. "So, shall we go the long way, or go through Uncle Rogan's office?"

Lorelei, Leander and Harry exited the kitchen, walked through the hallway that Harry had came through earlier before tackling the long series of stairs that led up to Rogan's office. When they came to the landing, Lorelei simply pressed against the bookshelf that served as the secret doorway to Rogan's office and the secret door swung open. Rogan wasn't in his office, although the newspapers that he had been reading in the morning were deposited in a neat pile on his desk.

Lorelei and Leander took a few quick glances around before Leander stroked the stone to shut the secret door and Lorelei opened the door on the other side of the wall. Leander shut the door, and Harry could hear a click – probably a self-locking mechanism. The hallway was dimly lit by torches, the walls were adorned with an occasional Goblin portrait but the floor was covered in carpet of black and gold, with the _Gringotts_ crest appearing periodically.

The tunnels were narrow and somewhat confusing, but Lorelei eventually led them to a cart platform. They had walked by several suited up Goblins who didn't give them a second glance. This one was much darker and dingier than the grand platform that Harry had seen yesterday, with _Gringotts_ banners and more torches illuminating the space. She jumped into a cart and pulled both Harry and Leander in with her. She manipulated what looked like a control panel hidden within the front of the cart and without warning, the vehicle lurched forward and started a steady acceleration.

"I hope you know where we are going!" Leander yelled as the cart lurched up and down violently in a sickeningly manner. "Damn it, I should have driven."

"Ah, shut it. You aren't a Merryweather, you can't drive for beans!" Lorelei exclaimed, "Just because I showed you several times how to operate a cart doesn't mean you can drive!"

"Oh shush - you, did you bring the _Clankers _at least?" Leander asked. "We are heading towards the surface –"

"No, I didn't bring them." Lorelei said sarcastically. "I –"

"Alright, I am sorry!" Leander interrupted rather loudly. He then whispered to Harry, "You've got to apologize when she gets into that sarcastic pissy-mood of hers, even if you are have nothing to be sorry for. It just isn't worth the conse-"

"I HEARD THAT!" Lorelei's irritation echoed throughout the chamber. "Why, oh why are you being so annoying today?"

"And you are on a short-fuse... Do you want to talk about it?" Leander asked concernedly. After a moment of peace and quiet, he said. "Or is it that time of the m-"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, or I will use _you_ instead of the _Clankers_. You know how they starve the poor thing... She could probably use the extra morsel of Goblin."

"What are the _Clankers_?" Harry finally interjected as Leander shook his head and muttered darkly. "I have such a difficult life." He then grinned childishly when Lorelei turned around.

Harry had an odd feeling that Leander got a kick out of being a nuisance.

Lorelei pulled out something covered in a brown bag. She grabbed it by the middle of the bag. "There are dragons used to guard these tunnels. They've been conditioned to fear the loud sound of the _Clankers_." She slightly shook the bag and a loud _clang_ was heard, forcing both Harry and Leander to wince. "But really, I can toss Leander here overboard, and I think the dragon we will be passing shall be much happier."

"Too little meat, too many bones," Leander objected. "She'd prefer a human like you, Lorelei."

Lorelei's retort was lost when the sounds of a dragon tugging on metal chains and furious roars filled the space. She turned her head towards them, a fearsome spiked red head with dull eyes and vicious teeth. She reared back, exposing her massive wingspan. Lorelei pulled out the bag once more, and the loud _clanging_ filled the dungeon. Harry covered his ears with his hands, even though it was futile and watched as the dragon cowered and fled whimpering to the rocks it was chained to.

"Really, one would be foolish to rob _Gringotts_," Leander stated moments after.

"Unless you are a Goblin yourself," Lorelei mused. "Someone who knows how everything works..."

Leander looked thoughtfully at Lorelei as she suddenly decelerated the cart, causing it to halt beside a simple door with the number 9472 engraved on it. "This is your vault, Harry."

Harry scrambled onto the stone platform. He pulled out the silver key from a zippered pocket and kneeled down to fit it into the slot. He gave it a deft turn, and the door swung open, revealing a pile of gleaming Galleons.

"Here, you might want a bag!" Lorelei tossed a sack at Harry, who caught it.

"Thanks." Harry started removing many handfuls of gold from the pile. He smiled at the pile of money. It was nice to know that this was all his. When he was done, he relocked the door and he vaulted into the cart, nearly landing on Leander in the process.

"Hey, be careful!" Leander scrunched further into his back corner.

"Sorry." Harry claimed the other back corner.

Lorelei shrunk Harry's bag of coins so that it would fit discreetly in one of his jean pockets before starting the cart off again. Harry had regrettably forgotten to bring his coat. It was another five minutes before Lorelei slowed down the cart again. "Get off here and meet me at the back!"

Harry had no idea what back she was referring to, but he and Leander both scrambled out of the cart, as Lorelei continued on along the tracks. Leander gently tugged at Harry's sleeve and pulled him towards a pitch-black tunnel. Leander then snatched a torch from one of the brackets nearby and the two continued onwards. With the combination of Leander's fire and his own magic-sense, Harry could see that the darkness hid a long flight of stairs upwards. Silly frantically tasted the air to make up for the lack of sensory information. He had been quiet during the trip, occasionally squeezing Harry during particularly turbulent driving.

The obsidian walls were incredibly polished and engraved with _Gobbledegook_ and pictures. He couldn't resist tracing the smooth etchings with the tips of his fingers.

"This is the _Hall of Memory_." Leander said quietly. His head was bowed. "On these walls are engraved the name of every Goblin that our people can account for lost in the Wizarding Wars."

"It's a memorial of sorts..."

"Yes... it is." Leander whispered as they climbed up the stairs. "War is not a pleasant thing, Harry. These walls are built with a mixture of blood, bones and tears. This tunnel was a bloodbath before it got turned into this. My father took me here when I was ten and asked that I never forgot our family's legacy."

"Why do we have war?"

Leander shrugged. "I don't know. There are many reasons for war – conquest, hatred, discrimination, resentment, power, money – the list goes on. It can be often a summation of the little things. Someone breaks an agreement, someone misinterprets a message, like dominos – you never know."

"Voldemort, Grindelwald..." Harry murmured, "Dumbledore –"

"My father's uncle – my great-uncle – perished in the _Final Battle_." Leander said rather dryly, "The battle where Grindelwald was disarmed, bound and sent to Nuremburg. He died childless and my Father inherited the title of High Lord from him. He was about my age when he died. An _Avada Kedavra_ killed him. Grindelwald took down many before Albus Dumbledore managed to disarm him."

"What do all these titles mean?" Harry asked, "High Lord, Lord –"

Leander laughed. He then turned to look at Harry. "You are an interesting kid, Harry. This stuff used to put Lorelei and me to sleep when we were little and carefree. My father is High Lord... the head of all the Reinhardts in Europe. The Lord is the head of a family in a particular area. There's a Lord Reinhardt in Munich, Paris, Moscow and etc. But to avoid confusion, we call them by their first name."

The pair finally made it to the top, where Leander found an empty bracket to place his torch. "Carts are actually seriously regulated in _Gringotts_. It's illegal to randomly take a cart like we just did. Lorelei's known to commandeer carts now and there, so the _Watchers_ above are used to seeing her pretty face. It helps that she's Hurst's daughter. They don't ask her questions. I might be Lord Eisenheim's son and heir but in an uncertain world of Merryweathers – you can never be too careful."

"But you know Lorelei..." Harry mused.

"It doesn't mean I know her entire family, Harry." Leander countered. He led Harry through another tunnel – this time brightly lit and hung with the Family banners. "I am familiar with Lorelei's immediate family, but that's only a crumb of the entire pie of Merryweathers. By nature, Goblins are usually pretty suspicious of those in the other clans, even though I am pretty sure that by now every Goblin has the blood of all three families running in their veins."

They emerged into the back of surface-level _Gringotts_ with its smooth white marbled walls and elegant arches. The carts were operating in full swing, with Goblins emerging from down below and Goblins heading back down. One of the _Watchers_ gave Leander a curt nod, as he steered Harry out of the building and to the outside world. Harry found himself once again regretting that he had left his coat down below when the cold air assailed his body.

"Why do you carry a sword?" Harry asked when they finally stopped beside a large column outside, presumably to wait for Lorelei.

Leander unsheathed his broadsword. The blade did not gleam or shine. It was a dull darkish-black and the hilt looked like it was made out of a stone as smooth as marble. "The Reinhardts are known for the three Fs, Harry – Fighting, Food and the third F – probably not appropriate to say around a child. In the old days – and sometimes even today... our family hold duels to settle arguments. This is _Ashen_... my great-Uncle's blade... the very blade he took to Grindelwald's downfall and his own."

Harry was surprised when Leander offered the historical blade to him, hilt first. He made eye-contact with Leander, who gave him a friendly smile and a nod as he placed his hands reluctantly around the smooth coldness of the hilt. Leander let go. Harry readjusted his grip on the leather. It was heavy.

"Hold it like this." Leander reached out and readjusted Harry's hands on the hilt. "You should learn how to wield a sword. It's one of the traditions that both wizards and Goblins hold in great esteem, especially amongst the high-born of both societies. This is how you swing. Loosen up – don't be so tense." Leander, who still had Harry's hands and the sword hilt in his long-fingered grip, gently swung the blade into empty space. He then allowed Harry to swing it a few times on his own.

"You look like a half-decent swordsman." Lorelei's voice drifted over to Harry. Both turned to look as she walked towards them. "You should ask Richard to teach you. Leander and I could, but Richard knows what there is to know about blades. I can fight him to a stalemate, but –"

"You can't exactly disarm him?" Leander finished. "I have that problem too. It's like the damned blade is glued into his hands or something. Nor can you get him into a position to surrender. That man's a bloody cat! I tried tripping him once and I was the one who ended up on the ground, swordpoint to neck... mind you."

Harry handed back _Ashen_ and Leander put her back in her scabbard. They headed towards the front side of _Gringotts_, towards the more densely wizard-populated areas.

"He's been whipping our asses ever since we could pick up a sword." Lorelei said forlornly.

"Can we have ice cream?" Leander changed the topic. "I really really –"

Lorelei shook her head at Leander, "Honestly, you are one big child! Later, when we actually get some stuff accomplished..."

"Yes, mother..." Leander replied childishly.

"Did you just compare me to your mother?" Lorelei asked suspiciously.

"Oh, look – a clothing shop! Didn't Harry need clothes?" Leander said quickly, pointing to _Madam Malkin's_.

"Yeah, I don't have anything except the clothes on my back." Harry said, as Lorelei murmured, "I am not done with you yet, Leander..."

Leander pushed opened the door while complaining, "She's never bloody done with me."

As Lorelei was rummaging for appropriate clothes for Harry, Harry was standing on a stool while Madam Malkin began measuring him with an assortment of magical rulers, under control of her wand. Harry had passed Silly on to Leander. It was an hour later before Harry had several robes that fitted him perfectly, a pair of boots – dragonhide – and even some winter clothing. Leander had found him a nice weather-proof cloak with a silver dragon clasp at the front that Harry had particularly liked. It was pricey, but Harry shrugged – he had the galleons now, didn't he? Lorelei had also reassured him that the cloak could be enlarged when he grew larger with a simple charm. She also shrank down Harry's purchases, with the exception of the cloak, which Harry immediately donned. He tucked his bags of clothes in the large discreet pocket of his cloak.

They spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon visiting various shops – Leander bought himself a nice falcon-feathered quill and several leaves of parchment, Lorelei bought some stuff too, and Harry splurged on a raven quill that was self-inking and wrote with a unique green ink that he particularly liked. They had walked into _Quality Quidditch Supplies_ and Harry spent some time examining the brooms and several animated posters of people flying on brooms. He had never seen or flew on a broom, but he had heard plenty of enthused chatter on it from Hannah and Richard. After looking at a price tag of the latest model of broom – the price was well over one-third of what he had left in his vault after splurging on clothes and stationery – the three walked out.

Ice cream was had at Fortescue's after Lorelei had finally given in to Leander's whining. Harry had asked for some chocolate and vanilla, Lorelei had an orange sherbet while Leander bought the largest sundae that Mr. Fortescue had on his menu. They all sat at a wooden table in the sunny outdoors, despite the close to freezing temperatures under the shade of a colourful umbrella. Harry had also requested a glass of water for Silly and the snake was now coiled up on the surface of the wooden table, lapping up water topped with a slice of lemon.

"Fortescue's is my favourite!" Leander grinned, as he tackled his bowl of ice cream. "If I wasn't born an heir, I think I would have gone into the ice cream business!"

"That would last you what – max a week?" Lorelei said thoughtfully. She laughed and then threw a tease. "You'd eat all your stock!"

Harry took a bite out of his ice cream and found that Leander's praises weren't too far off the mark. It was bloody delicious.

"You have so little faith in me." Leander said with a grievously injured look.

Harry spread his magic out behind him to examine the other pedestrians that were out on this chilly October day. It was a shame that he couldn't see colour through magic-sense, but it served its purposes. He could feel the familiarity of the magic thrumming in every wizard and witch that were nearby. There was nothing too much out of the ordinary until a large dark – presumably black, judging by the shade that he saw in his mind – dog strode jauntily down the street. It stopped once to let a child pet him, before moving on.

He could sense that there was something magical about that dog. It seemed wizard-like!

_Animals weren't supposed to give off vibes like that! _

"That looks like the Grim." Lorelei said to Leander as she finished her last scoop of ice cream.

"I didn't know you were superstitious!" Leander exclaimed, putting his well-licked spoon back into his empty sundae bowl. "I mean, we have enough grim things to keep ourselves occupied."

"I am not –"

_Were there such things as magical dogs?_ Harry then picked up the pace on his ice cream eating, considering that his companions were done.

**/Sirius\**

"Darius, did you order the stuff –"

Sirius looked extremely guilty as he turned around in his leather swivel chair towards the pretty and sometimes absent-minded Arty – short for Artemis – looking sternly at him. She was one of Forest's new post-docs.

"Bloody Mer-I mean hell, are you playing Solitaire?"

_Wait, did she mean to swear to Merlin? _Sirius found himself wondering. _And here I was thinking that I was surrounded by Muggles! _He had been surprised when Forest told him that he had accepted a professorship before Sirius' infamous escape, but in retrospect, it was probably one of the reasons why Forest had decided to return back across the pond. In less than the span of two months, Forest had erected a laboratory of sorts on the top floor of one of the University's research buildings. He also hired several grads and post-docs to run his lab. The days of lounging around for Sirius Black, alias Darius Kaiser was over as Forest had recruited him to attend to the administrative and money stuff for the laboratory.

'_I know your type, Sirius. You need something to do, or you will go mad. I know this isn't the most fun thing in the world, but I really really really need someone to keep track of where the money is going and keep an eye on what's going on in the lab.'_

And, really he couldn't say no. This was a plea from a man who had rescued him from potential years of hell, although Forest might live to regret the decision. There were so many fun things that old-Padfoot could do with an operating budget of that size.

_It was nice to be needed though. _

"Are you in there, Darius?" Arty was starting to get that look of exasperation on her face. Sirius grinned doggishly at her and gave her the look that said, _'I know something you don't know...'_

She was dressed in a nice form-fitting dark-green blouse, her raven hair tied back in a messy ponytail and her unbuttoned lab coat was a few sizes too big for her. An array of colourful pens and waterproof markers was clipped onto the chest pocket of her lab coat. She was much shorter than Sirius and appeared to be Asian in origin, with a possibility of having Caucasian parentage as well. There was an air of familiarity about her as well; Sirius wondered if it was because she had attended Hogwarts during the years that he had been there.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Sirius said easily. "I will get you your antibodies soon, I promise." He threw in a puppy-eyed look for good measure. "Can I buy you coffee sometime to make up for my laziness?"

"You definitely can." Arty tucked a strand of wayward hair behind her left ear. "Give me ten minutes. I want to set the PCR up and then we can go."

Sirius watched her – or rather her ass – as she walked away to do whatever she needed to do. He flipped through a stack of catalogues that was located beside the computer to find what Arty wanted – _Sigma-Aldrich, Millipore, Bio-rad.._. _Some mouse-anti-p53; and a goat-telomerase, was it?_ He consulted a pink-sticky note that Arty had stuck on the computer the day prior.

"Hey, Darius – could you order another set of gel plates? Jon the klutz shattered a pair yesterday while bringing them to the sink –"

"Shut up, Natalie!"

There were several other requests and Sirius dutifully wrote everything down on a pad of paper. Laboratory stuff was fucking expensive. That was something else that Sirius had discovered. Here, one ml of seemingly colourless liquid could be had for hundreds of pounds and a jar of laboratory grade salt could go for under fifty quid.

By the time he was settling back into his interrupted game of Solitaire back on the computer, Arty was back with her dark pea coat and purse.

"Let's go – I've got four hours or so to kill. I've already told Seth to put my tubes in the fridge if I don't make it back and Katrina will take the secondary off –"

Sirius flung his own grey overcoat over his striped shirt and the pair headed towards the elevators. He mused that it was also for his own benefit that Forest had gotten him to work here. _No one would suspect that the pureblooded and supposed Death Eater Sirius Black was working in a Muggle research lab._ It was the perfect camouflage, really. He fingered the plastic badge that had his picture and new moniker printed upon it – _Kaiser, Darius – Laboratory Manager._ The stuff that went on in there was beyond him, but he was learning, slowly. _Why didn't they teach this stuff at Hogwarts?_ It was kind of important stuff – how living things actually worked, while crap like _Divination _and outdated _History of Magic_ was offered back in his days at Hogwarts.

The picture of himself on his badge was slightly different than pictures taken pre-Azkaban. Forest had gone and bought a set of advanced human_-Transfiguration_ texts, after they had both discovered that they both couldn't produce functional _Glamours_ that lasted a decent amount of time – neither of them had been exceptional in _Charms_. _Transfiguration_ was something that Sirius had excelled at, although he would have preferred going by the _Glamour_ route, it wasn't invasive. He had given himself a slightly more prominent jawline, made his nose slightly pointier and other miniscule changes. He had also darkened the shade of his grey eyes. _He hated having to change his features – he thought he was perfect the way he was._ Forest had made him a Potion that reversed the tattooing spell that the guards had utilized, although each application to the old ink forced him to bite his tongue to keep his screams of pain from frightening Hadrian in the living room.

"Busy day?" Sirius asked in an attempt to make small-talk when the pair walked into the elevator.

"Every day is a busy day, Darius."Arty replied. "I've got three experiments running simultaneously, and Forest wants me to repeat the results of this other study that was published last week because he thinks the other guys screwed up."

The pair walked to the local coffee shop, where Sirius bought himself a plain coffee and a latte for Arty. He also bought several doughnuts.

Arty remarked when she sat down. "It's been a while since someone offered to buy me coffee."

When they were both halfway through their doughnuts – a rainbow sprinkled one for Sirius and a chocolate one for Arty – Sirius remarked casually, "So you let something interesting slip today..."

"Did I really?" Arty held Sirius' gaze. "What did I say?"

"You said bloody Mer-hell." Sirius grinned mischievously, "You wanted to say Merlin, didn't you? You went to Hogwarts, didn't you?"

Arty flushed. "Darn it. You've got me there. I was a Ravenclaw. But I immersed myself in the Muggle-life after I graduated."

"But why?" Sirius was genuinely surprised.

"Because I couldn't take it anymore," Arty almost choked on her latte. She sat in silence for a minute, and Sirius found his brain meandering in the past. The countless blank faces of Hogwarts students that he had once walked with almost a decade ago. _How naive they had all been. Full of grandiose ideals that could never be realized... or sounded good on principle, but things were never what they seemed._ His thoughts were disturbed when she whispered. "Do you remember Marlene McKinnon?"

"She was murdered, wasn't she?" Sirius found himself lapsing into the same darkness that Arty was currently engulfed within. Yes, he remembered Marlene. Lily's best friend... He had even dated her for a year – the one serious relationship that he'd ever had. She had long wavy brown hair, dark chocolate eyes and an infectious cheerful disposition towards life. It had been so long since he had thought of his ex. Ever since they had broken up, ever since her death... And vaguely, he remembered Arty. She had been the Remus of Lily's group, although Arty had been a lot closer to Marlene than Lily. But she wasn't Artemis back then, wasn't she?_ She hadn't been someone memorable back in the day, or maybe it was he who had changed._ "You were Emily back then."

"Artemis is my middle name." Arty said somewhat wistfully. "I had them flipped on my birth certificate after her entire family was killed in preparation for university. I wanted to start fresh, Darius. But I did find out..."

"Find out what?" Sirius prompted.

"That Marlene is still alive. But she's changed." Arty said tonelessly. "She sent me an owl at the beginning of summer. I thought it was odd that she would wait almost a decade before attempting to contact me! I went to see her. The meeting occurred at a quaint little wand shop in Knockturn Alley –"

_Why did everything happen in that quaint little wand shop?_ Sirius found himself thinking furiously. _And why didn't Marlene go to Dumbledore after? She had been an Order member as he had been. _

"And there she was. Sitting cross-legged on a divan in a wooden room filled with oriental artifacts – pottery, swords, you name it." Arty continued in a monotone. "She wore a hooded long cloak, jet black and her face was covered by a black veil – rather like a niqab. But it wasn't for religious purposes, no – " Arty hesitated then; there was agony in her brown eyes, "It was to hide the scars."

"The scars?" Sirius asked, cautiously. "As in –"

"_Sectumsempra_," Arty finished. "You know those can't heal. And that wasn't all the curse got either –"

"It wasn't?" Sirius found himself spouting stupid questions.

"No," Arty said sadly, "It severed her right arm. By all accounts she should have died that night Voldemort came calling. But Marle-marle – you know the nickname we used to have for her – she found a way to survive. She was found minutes later by someone dressed in Death Eater gear and was whisked away to safety."

"And..." Sirius had a nasty feeling at the pit of his stomach.

"She scared the fucking shit out of me, Darius." Arty said in a carefully controlled tone, although Sirius could see that in her eyes that she had been deeply affected by what she had seen. The Marlene he knew had been kind and gentle. Heck, the Marlene Arty had known had been that too. "She removed the cloth covering her face and she was laughing – cackling would have been the better word – _'Aren't I a pretty sight – Em –'_ ... The mutilated lips, the severed corner of nose, the wound that almost missed her eye – I have nightmares of her. And she talks incessantly about Severus Snape..."

"Because he did it," Sirius said with a tone of finality. "_Sectumsempra_ was his work."

"Aye, it was." Arty nodded. "And of how she would love to stick her knives into his corpse. She showed me her knives too." She shuddered. "If I was Severus, I would not sleep easily at night."

"Why are you telling me this?" Sirius asked, "Me, a stranger?"

Arty smiled thinly. There was a nostalgic air in her voice. "Because I know who you are, dog-star. I was Marle-marle's best friend. You were Marle-marle's ex-boyfriend. Marle-marle died the day Voldemort took everything from her. What's left is madness."

There was an awkward silence before Sirius got up, "I think we need a second drink." He returned with a second latte for Arty while he got himself a fresh strawberry smoothie. He found himself wishing that he was at a bar of some sort. He needed something like a _Firewhiskey_, and he had no doubt that Arty needed one too.

"Thanks." Arty gently blew the steaming cup, "For listening to me. I needed it."

"No problem." Sirius looked down awkwardly. He then asked, "What brought you here?"

"To the Malfoy Lab?" Arty grinned. "I just finished my Ph. D. last year down at Oxford. And when I was searching up post-doc offerings, my old advisor suggested I go take a shot at Forest's position. I thought I had no chance, Darius." She sipped at her latte. "He interviewed me, and it turned out that he was interested in hiring those with our background for some special project that he was interested in pursuing. Most of the people in our lab, Darius, are actually magical with an exception or two, I don't quite remember – but Seth does. That man remembers everything."

"You are damned unusual." Sirius mused, "You are like the only pureblood that I knew who went into the–"

"Yeah," Arty agreed. "My parents pretty much cut me off. It wasn't fun, but I think what they were most surprised was the development of a backbone in me. I send them an occasional card and get nothing back in return. I like to think that they get at least a read through once before they get chucked into the fire."

Sirius laughed. "I guess I can relate to that. All those howlers..."

"Yeah... your parents were a piece of work from what I remembered." Arty chuckled too, "I got those howlers too, after I started my university life. Really awkward especially since I had a roommate who wasn't magical – I lived in perpetual fear that my roommate would someday come in to my room when an owl arrived, or I had my wand out – had to _silence_ those damned things before they became activated."

Sirius erupted into bark-like fits of laughter. Arty did too. Sure, the imagery was funny, but Sirius had a feeling that they were not laughing at Arty's misfortune, but rather for their own lost innocence.

"Let's go for a walk, Darius." Arty stood up. "Being cooped inside all day makes Arty a miserable girl."

Sirius nodded, and the pair donned their outerwear before heading out into the cool air of Muggle London. The breeze blew against them when they emerged from the warm interior. Sirius, with his hands in his pockets, asked a question that he had been dying to ask since discovering Arty's connection to his past. "Do you think I did it?" His voice cracked in the middle.

"Did what?" Arty looked confused.

"Betrayed them," Sirius elaborated curtly.

"No," Arty replied promptly, but she let the monosyllable linger for awhile. "I don't think you could. I knew how close-knit you and James were. You would have done anything for him, as I would have for Marlene a decade back..."

"Thank you," Sirius fidgeted a bit with the fabric of his coat. "I know Forest knows I didn't do it, but it's different you know – you knew –"

"Yeah, it\s different being an outsider versus someone who actually knew all the people involved." Arty mused. She then touched upon another sore subject. "Have you spoken to Remy yet?"

"No," Sirius sighed dejectedly, "I am afraid..."

"That he doubted you?" Arty asked. There was a certain twinge of sadness in her tone.

"Yeah," Sirius looked forlorn. "I was hurt when they decided to change Secret-Keeper that day. But I understood why they did it. I was disappointed that James couldn't –" He blinked rapidly; he couldn't finish the sentence.

It cut too deep.

Arty was silent when they walked through the campus grounds, on the quaint concrete tiling that laid out the paths. The trees were all barren, the skies grey and the clouds thick.

"It's almost a betrayal of sorts to you too." She said slowly. "James forfeited his trust to you on that day. They didn't make contingencies just in case they put all their eggs in the wrong basket – so to speak..."

"I will never understand what happened that day." Sirius said resignedly. "And part of me wants to bury that hatchet. And part of me wants to go find that fucking rat and tear him into tiny little pieces – or maybe..."

"What?" Arty asked sharply.

"I know Forest wants some rat-models..."

Arty laughed. "I don't think he's fit for our experiments either..." She then said seriously, "I know I have no right telling you what you should do or not do, but after seeing Marlene and her crazy obsession with the man who almost killed her..."

"You think I shouldn't go after the rat..." Sirius sighed.

"Yeah," Arty agreed, "But, I would totally understand if you did though."

They loitered in the grounds for a bit longer. They weren't alone though; there was the hustle of undergrads moving from night classes to other classes or back to their dorms. Sirius bought some hot dogs and chips from a local vendor and they had their unhealthy dinner on a nearby bench beneath the darkening skies before the pair headed back to the research facility.

"I have a feeling that you are going to look for Marlene to satisfy your curiosity," Arty deduced on the elevator ride back.

"I think we've been spending too much time together..." Sirius joked, "You know me too well..."

"Sometimes," Arty said philosophically, "Things are best left as past memories."

* * *

Review?

I was going to write another section, but then that might take another week. :X

Happy Victoria Day for those who care! :)


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